Back when Pulp Fiction ‘homages’ were all the rage, a young Charlize Theron made her mark as a fearsome, sexually aggressive schemer in 2 Days In The Valley, one of the very best of all the sub-Tarantino flood of movies that thrust a group of seemingly unconnected characters into a circuitous crime plot. That flood has since slowed to a trickle, but every now and then along comes a movie forged in QT’s image. Gringo is just such a film, and wouldn’t you know, it features Charlize Theron as a fearsome, sexually aggressive schemer. The circle is complete.
For his debut film, after years of stunt work and second unit shenanigans, Nash Edgerton has assembled a fine ensemble for his tale of criminal behaviour down Mexico way, including his brothers Joel. But Theron is the stand-out, clearly relishing playing a rapacious, soulless sociopath who gets the majority of the film’s best lines. Most of which are of the unrepeatable, can’t-quite-believe-she-said-that variety.
When the bullets and the pop culture-related banter are flying, it’s a lot of fun.
She’s very much a supporting character, though. Gringo differs from most Tarantino-esque flicks in that it has a clear lead, in David Oyelowo’s hapless Harold Soyinka, a Nigerian immigrant and all-round nice guy who’s had it up to here with his dead-end job and mounting debt, but just finds himself getting deeper with every terrible decision he makes. Oyelowo’s career has been admirable, but not exactly heavy on light relief. Here, he makes Harold into a sympathetic, rounded yet comedic figure, regularly unleashing a corker of a high-pitched, terrified scream as he is regularly thrust into life-or-death situations. And when he’s teamed with a bearded and brash Copley, as a mercenary trying desperately to do the right thing, it leads to some of the film’s funniest moments, as well as the odd unexpectedly profound exchange.
Not everyone in the ensemble gets to shine. The film does have an issue with some of its less important characters, struggling to incorporate the likes of Amanda Seyfried’s Sunny and Harry Treadaway’s Miles into the central plot, while Thandie Newton is utterly wasted in a thankless role as Harold’s duplicitous wife that ultimately ends up as nothing more than a cheap punchline. Plot-wise, some of the coincidences piled on by Edgerton and his writers, Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone, are hard to swallow, even for a film of this nature. And while it was clearly shot, for the most part, on location in Mexico, it never quite gets that sense of sweaty impending doom captured so effortlessly in previous tales of Mexican-set mayhem, such as Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia or even the average cartel-led episode of Breaking Bad.
But when the bullets and the pop culture-related banter are flying (a drug dealer has an extended riff about which Beatles album is best; scandalously, he never once mentions Abbey Road), it’s a lot of fun. Particularly when Theron is on screen, pushing the politically incorrect envelope with barely contained glee.
