Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Gringo Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 5, 2018

Gringo is an Amazon Studios production directed by Nash Edgerton (The Square) in which an American, in the midst of personal and financial crisis, finds himself taking increasingly desperate, and darkly humorous, measures to salvage the remnants of the thing he once knew as his life. The film strives to find the humor in personal collapse as well as the darkly ambitious worlds of big business, sex, and drugs. But Gringo suffers from uninteresting characters, plot deviations, tonal detours: a general lack of focus, really. It's not funny or dark enough on one end, it's not as gripping and dramatically satisfying on the other. It fails to grab the viewer, instead settling for piecemeal bits of comedy, excitement, and drama that stitch together a coherent narrative but one that leaves the audience unsatisfied and yearning for more.

Harold (David Oyelowo) works for Promethium Pharmaceuticals under the careful eye of his employer, Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton), the company's CEO who can't keep his pants zipped, particularly around his sexy second in command, Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron), who isn't above flaunting her assets to get what she wants. The three of them head to Mexico to work a deal that Harold discovers has the company mixed up with a deadly drug cartel. With his life already in ruins -- his wife has spent him into massive debt, she's cheating on him, and he discovers what Richard and Elaine really think of him -- he stages his own fake kidnapping in an effort to come into some easy money. While neither Richard nor Elaine care all that much about his well-being, this scheme sends them into a panic, believing that their underhanded dealigns with the cartel are catching up to them. Unfortunately for Harold, and all involved, the staged kidnapping evolves into a much more dangerous scenario that puts everyone at real risk, including two brothers (Diego Catano and Rodrigo Corea) who helped Harold stage the kidnapping and a pair of Americans (Harry Treadaway and Amanda Seyfried) who inadvertently become larger pieces of the puzzle.

Gringo is scattershot and scatterbrained, scuffling and scurrying about in an effort to weave together a number of disparate tonal highlights between its core dramatic and narrative ebbs and flows and its slyly humorous dark end. None of it really works. There's a decent enough story packed into the movie, the tale of a man at wit's end who fakes his own kidnapping when various revelations come to light and his desperate-meter's needle is shoved all the way to the right, but (Director) Edgerton never finds that sweet spot balance necessary to build a character roster (never mind just the focal hero) the audience can get behind or capture the story structure and pacing critical in finely developing the film with any resonance at its center. What might have been a very good dark comedy or edgy thriller is instead a mishmash of both ends, never pushing hard to fully engage at either end and flubbing about in a gray-area middle ground where neither component earns the focus necessary to get the most from the story as-structured. It's easy to spot a number positives throughout the film, but they come more insolation than they do as a finely meshed and polished finished product.

Gringo does piece together some good performances while crafting a few quality action pieces along the way. The primary cast is fine and does well to juggle the film's conflicting, not complimentary, tones. David Oyelowo of course carries the film with the best work of the bunch and comes closest to finding that tonal middle ground, revealing the disappointments, stresses, and the physical toll his ordeal takes on him throughout the course of the movie. He's limited by a script that just doesn't allow him -- or any of his co-stars -- to stretch, but there's no mistaking his dedication to the role and willingness to take chances in the name of carrying a script in need of an actor of his abilities to nurture it to fruition with any sort of clarity and consistency. None of the other characters are really fleshed out to any reasonable point to where the cast can do much with them. Amanda Seyfried and Sharlto Copley, both amongst the better actors working today, are completely lost in roles that feel rushed into the script. Joel Edgerton is flat, Alan Ruck's character is superfluous, and so too is Charlize Theron's, for that matter, the latter of whom adds some sex appeal to the movie but little more in terms of narrative necessities.

Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Gringo arrives on Blu-ray with a well-rounded digitally sourced 1080p transfer. Universal's presentation is not necessarily a standout, but it delivers essentials with agreeable screen presence. Details are consistently crisp. Facial textures, clothes, environments -- whether sharply appointed offices, cramped spaces, shoddy hotels, restaurants, anywhere and everywhere the film goes, from snowy Chicago to blisteringly hot Mexico -- each prove pleasantly revealing and about as complex as one could want on this format. Some lower light shots struggle to hold firm color depth, pushing pasty in chapter six, but the palette, generally speaking, impresses with good saturation and color vitality, extending to both shadow details/black levels and skin tones alike. There is some significant banding in a nighttime shot at the 26-minute mark but other bothersome source or encode anomalies are of minimal concern. Though it's not a standout in any way, this transfer is well-rounded and delivers a good, format-average viewing experience.

Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gringo features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The first impressive sonic moment comes when Harold sings along with a rap song in his car, the shot offering positive low end depth and musical spread across the front. The track enlarges and intensifies as necessary. Action scenes are very stout and offer a nice contrast to what is otherwise a fairly straightforward, front-heavy listen. A car crash in chapter 10 delivers a series tumbling, twisting metal, deeply engaged sound elements with a strong low end sensation that dominates the stage with vigorous intensity. A street party in chapter 15 springs to life with immersive authenticity of all elements -- crowd din, blaring music -- and effortlessly draws the listener into the festive environment. Several agreeable discrete effects, such as a helicopter maneuvering through the rears in chapter nine, help create a realistic sound field even in sonically challenging moments. The track handles environmental din very well, too. Background elements inside a diner are filling and full, a buzzer at a basketball court in chapter three saturates the stage with positive intensity, and casual exteriors elements drift into the listening area with positive and immersive cadence. Dialogue commands the picture throughout and presents without any discernible flaw considering clarity, positioning, or prioritization.

Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Gringo contains a quartet of micro-featurettes. An Amazon Prime digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Who Is Harold? (1080p, 1:58): A lightning-quick piece that does not exclusively focus on Harold but also explores the larger plot and character roster.
• The Stunts of Gringo (1080p, 3:48): Examining the construction of a few of the film's intense action scenes.
• Filming Gringo in Mexico (1080p, 3:45): A short look at the benefits of shooting on-location.
• The Making of Gringo (1080p, 4:18): A brief catchall that explores plot, characters, performances, and tone.

Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gringo settles into a murky middle ground where none of its ideas are all that well developed, its dueling tones never mesh, and its characters largely fall flat, with even a solid cast unable to produce much of value. David Oyelowo is, thankfully as the man portraying the main character, the movie's high point, but the otherwise jumbled script, mismanaged tonal offsets, and barrage of poorly developed to nearly superfluous characters offer him very little with which to work against. Gringo isn't a complete misfire -- it's watchable if nothing else -- but it's a case study of a movie that could have been so much more. Universal's Blu-ray delivers a quality A/V experience while a quartet of minimal-impact supplements are included. Worth a look.