Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie Review

Too ambitious for its britches.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 9, 2015

Every last frame of Director Luis Puenzo's Old Gringo tells the same story of a movie with desperately high aspirations of becoming the next great, sprawling film epic. It oozes a desire to ascend to the loftiest heights of cinema greatness by way of both a sweeping romance and broad-scale wartime drama with epic battles, intimate romance, rich atmosphere, poetic scriptwriting, top-grade acting, artful photography, and all of the ingredients generally necessary to build a film beyond the basics and enrich it to masterpiece status. But its ambitions are its greatest stumbling block. It's clear that the movie simply tries too hard to achieve greatness. It feels far too calculated, too cold, too distant, too forced, lacking not necessarily the raw ingredients but instead the naturally occurring soul, the kind of real dramatic weight that cannot be manufactured but that must flow organically, that must be a result of, not the focus of the process towards, a combination of factors that, together and infrequently, yield cinema greatness.

The Americans.

Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda) is leaving her mother and career behind to travel to revolutionary Mexico in search of a new life. She's hired on as a helping hand at the Miranda estate, but before she can reach her destination she finds herself swept up in a battle at Chihuahua. She becomes an unwitting mule for the revolution when her luggage is emptied of its contents and replaced by weapons. She arrives at Miranda to find it a battle zone and taken over by a revolutionary general named Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits), who is lately accompanied by a disillusioned American author by the name of Ambrose Bierce (Gregory Peck) who has travelled to Mexico to find peace in what he hopes is a coming death. Both men see something in Winslow, and she them, and they wrestle for her affection while the war explodes around them, as Bierce searches for an escape from life and Arroyo searches for a way to redefine his.

Beyond its obvious attempts to manufacture greatness lie another inherent problem, the absence of truly special material. Old Gringo works through basic plot lines that never really amount to much, even as it plays with some solid themes that never feel fully, fundamentally incorporated into the story beyond serving as data points for exploration that are never satisfactorily considered, be that due to script shortcomings, flat performances, or that overarching sense of struggle to elevate the movie to something that it's not. Most interesting of the story's cues are the three broad character definitions, the contrasts between the woman who moves to Mexico to find a spark in her life, the man who travels there to end his, and the third man who fights to reform his by way of reshaping the environment in which exists. All of these play basic to the plot but feel washed away and set aside as the film settles to linger on slower story advances, stumbles through needless exposition, and focuses too tightly on action rather than drama. The movie feels ever bloated, not only suffering by way of an overextended runtime but by moving its attention from what matters to ancillary bits that don't do much, if anything, to support the more dynamic human interest trio of clashing desires, ideals, and visions for themselves and the world around them that would have made for a more intimately fascinating character study over a needlessly excessive would-be grand film.

There's never a real sense of chemistry amongst the leads, either, resulting in detached characters and wayward performances that seem always to rely on sheer acting muscle rather than character intimacy and scripted construction. Gregory Peck seems perpetually stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place in the film, desperately working through a flimsy script and relying on his raw acting chops to elevate the character and create a lyrical, lived in, weighty character for whom he never can quite find the right voice, resulting in a character that feels stifled and phony, an empty vessel of words -- albeit well spoken words -- that cannot find that intimate grandeur the script seems so desperate to engender within him. Jimmy Smits' character feels much the same way, a touch more authentic, perhaps, but more reliant on his stereotypical look -- makeup, mustache, wardrobe -- and less on his outer or inner journeys which aren't quite so lost as Peck's Ambrose Bierce but that don't find a lot of definition beyond the surface. Jane Fonda seems perpetually lost in the movie, never finding the right emotive reactions to anything from death to romance, forcing every moment and failing to give the character any sort of tangible shape.

All of that said, the movie has its moments. From a purely visual perspective it looks good and plays well. The dusty Mexican revolution setting feels effortlessly authentic down to the last little bit of costuming and set design. The film finds a few interesting secondary characters, notably a shameless whore by the name of La Garduna (Jenny Gago) whose scenes are amongst the film's best, one in which she barters sex for a book with Bierce and manages to get her hands on Winslow's corset in the other, two of the only scenes in the film that play with a natural, easy flow and light up the screen with some authentic flavoring that's not stifled by the heavy-hand of demanding would-be epic moviemaking precision. There's also a certain fascination that comes from watching Old Gringo, a very real, tangible sense of just how close to greatness the movie truly is, how close it comes to achieving that goal of "sprawling epic." It's a tweaked script, more robustly developed characters, and less of a technically heavy hand away from something special. Maybe a lot of films could claim as much, but audiences can almost taste the precipice of glory in most every frame.

Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Old Gringo's 1080p transfer enjoys a few stretches of stability, but it's generally a disappointment. Grain is sharp and spiky and the image plays with an unnaturally processed appearance rather than a pure filmic texture. Details are never all that complex as a rule, not faces, not period clothes. There are some instances where the rocky Mexican terrain and some old weathered wood appear very well defined, but generally the image is flat, somewhat soft, and smothered by the sharpening and grossly overzealous grain. Things calm down in brief spurts and the transfer borders on "passable" when grain isn't razor-sharp and details spring to some semblance of life. Sadly, such occurrences are the minority. Colors are frequently washed out and blacks are likewise pale. Various speckles and bits of debris crop up throughout and noticeable wobble interferes with the opening titles. The image is badly in need of cleanup; as it is this is a bargain, low effort presentation from Mill Creek.

Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Old Gringo limps onto Blu-ray with a barely adequate Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. While there's some fair extension off to the sides -- music and basic atmospherics stretch the front fairly wide -- there's nothing in the way of pinpoint clarity. Music lacks definition and precision throughout the range with little separation between highs and lows. Gunfire and explosions barely register with any sort of authority. Light ambient effects satisfy to the extent that they're present. Dialogue, fortunately, never falls too far from normal, lacking lifelike precision but generally playing with a good, even balance with commendable center imaging.

Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Old Gringo contains no supplemental content.

Old Gringo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Old Gringo has its share of problems, "it tries too hard" being the most obvious but its underdeveloped and under explored characters and wayward performances a close second and third. But it's clear that, even through its flaws, the movie feels preciously close to the greatness for which it so desperately strives. It's worth a watch to see it play out and grasp for a status it can never reach, as well as for its solid production values and some good scenes mixed in with the bad. Ultimately, it feels like a made-for-TV epic rather than a cinematic masterpiece. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray offers bland video and audio. Rent it.