In a scene in How I Spent My Summer Vacation (less effective US-only title is Get the Gringo) we see Mel Gibson exhibiting one of his quirkier party tricks: celebrity impressions. Straight out of a Mexican prison, he calls up a billionaire and pretends to be Clint Eastwood!
Gibson, like the squinty-eyed actor, plays a man with no name and with a recurring affinity for mayhem. The guy’s a variation of Gibson’s own oft-played stereotype—the one out of Mad Max, Lethal Weapon or Conspiracy Theory. He plays a scarred professional with a flawed character who finds quasi-redemption by helping someone other than himself. Those ‘others’ are a young boy and his mother (Kevin Hernandez and Dolores Heredia) in a stuck-upon plot centering on an organ exchange.
When the film opens we see him eluding the US border patrol in a clown costume with a stack load of money. In a desperate gamble he flings his car over the fence and lands in Mexico, where the local law enforcement nabs his money and deposits him in a nearby prison.
This brings us to Gringo’s other star: the El Pueblito—a surreal and fascinating chawl-like jail. It’s a down-rotten place where gunplay, drugs, sex and small-time treachery are preconditions rather than options. El Pueblito is a poor-man’s bazaar that houses everything from tattoo shops to ice-cream shacks to penthouse apartments for privileged inmates. Built like a slum, but barricaded by a concrete wall, Pueblito was a real-life jail that was closed down in 2002. It officially housed 2,000 inmates; its actual body-count was three times that (It was sagaciously designed by production designer Bernardo Trujillo and filmed at a shut-down penitentiary in Veracruz).
Gringo is a maverick production by a maverick filmmaker, with a marketing maverick twist. The movie, out in theatres internationally, will not see a US cinema release. Instead it will be out on Video on Demand through Fox.
Like Apocalypto and Passion of the Christ also produced and written by Gibson (like Gringo) the one-line plot plays second fiddle to the screenplay’s invigorating, spontaneously combustible resourcefulness. It is gritty and cheesy; corny and dismissible; sneaky and shrewd— all at once.
Directed and co-written by longtime Mel Gibson Asst. Director Adrian Grunberg (Edge of Darkness, Apocalypto), How I Spent My Summer Vacation is produced and released by Icon International. It is rated R and features routine blood baths, body hammering and underage smoking.
Men in Black III
After launching themselves 15 years ago in a trademark world heavy on gross, slimy and silly extraterrestrial aliens of varying sizes, the Men in Black franchise returns to screens in its third coming.
Not much has changed since MIB II though. Will Smith is still the bickering and retorting Agent J, protégé and partner to Tommy Lee Jones’ somber Agent K. Two movies down and he’s still sporting the black suit and glasses, zapping nasty aliens and wiping innocent bystanders’ memories with the Neuralyzer. And he’s still trying to know K better albeit without much success.
MIB has a new chief Agent O (Emma Thompson). We meet her at the funeral of Agent Zed (Rip Torn), in an awkward and smile-inducing scene.
The new villain: Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) is imprisoned in a high security jail on the moon (growling mad, he’ll kill anyone who adds Animal to his name). He’s rescued after 40 years by Lily (Nicole Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls), who reunites him with the insect-like part of his right hand that shoots out sharp needles (his left hand was blown off by K years ago). Boris then travels back in time to 1969 to kill K and continue his invasion of the world.
Only J remembers K’s existence when he disappears from the present. And so to save him, J literally jumps into the past—right off the Chrysler Building. Once there, he dodges attempts at racial discrimination, teams up with a young K (Josh Brolin) and works on tracking down Boris and ArcNet, a force shield that will stop the invasion. The ArcNet is with a charming and innocent precognitive alien called the Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg).
After establishing the fundamentals of the franchise at the beginning, Director/Co-writer Barry Sonnenfeld doesn’t linger over revisions and calmly moves on, allowing the audience to be amazed by Josh Brolins impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones. MIB III is less slimy with less creatures and it delivers a far more enjoyable experience.
Released by Columbia Pictures, produced by Amblin Entertainment, P+M and Image Nation, MIB III is rated PG-13 with cartoonish violence on aliens and profanity.—Farheen Jawaid
