El Gringo

'EL GRINGO': Four Stars (Out of Five)

Eduardo Rodriquez directed this Scott Adkins action vehicle for After Dark Films (as part of their expansion into the action genre). It was written by Jonathan Stokes and produced by action master Joel Silver! It costars Yvette Yates, Erando Gonzalez and Christian Slater. The film is a great throwback to spaghetti westerns and other old school action films and continues to showcase the remarkable talents of Scott Adkins as a new leading man action hero.

Adkins plays a DEA agent (who is never named, in true spaghetti western fashion) who is setup and attacked in the middle of the dessert. His partners are killed but he manages to escape (after killing the gunmen who attacked him). He stages his own death and flees into Mexico with a bag full of drug money. He runs into hostility there wherever he goes as the locals don't seem to want him in their town. He finds a little help from a local bar owner (Yates) but soon finds a ton of opposition from the local corrupt sheriff (Gonzalez), and his drug cartel thugs, as well as his old DEA boss (Slater), who tracks him down.

The movie is a pretty impressive style over substance indie action film. Rodriguez's directing is cool and the script is fun. There's of course not a lot to the story but the action is almost nonstop and Adkins really shines as an action force to be reckoned with. It's nice to see someone other than Jason Statham still consistently making cool B action films. The movie was made for just $7 million but it's definitely not short on explosions or gun battles. This is the stuff that the action films of yesteryear were made of; just good old action loving fun!

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Even clichés can be nice to watch. So while the title is talking about a "stranger/foreigner", the plot itself is actually pretty common. You might have seen similar stories told and some even in a better fashion (hopefully). But this still is a lot of fun, if you let it. There are some nice little visual tweaks here and there and the editing style is all over the place too. It might not be your taste, but you can't fault the movie for trying.

Scott Adkins delivers again and you can see why he sort of revives the 80s action movie style almost by himself. He has that kind of charisma and I don't mean that in a degrading way. The dog sub story is good and even Christian Slater isn't a big letdown as he was in his last couple of movies ...

If you like action this movie will not disappoint the story is nothing that hasn't been done before but it is put together quiet well, and the acting is as good as it gets for a low budget movie... of course its not a masterpiece but i feel it deserves a chance. Reading some of the reviews i felt that they forgot to mention that this was a movie meant to entertain people and it does just that, i was very entertained by the end of it and not only was i entertained but i found myself with a silly smile on my face from laughing hard most times and then end up getting angry the next scene, this movie is like a roller coaster never a dull moment. I highly recommend it simply for its high entertainment value, don't go in expecting Quentin Tarantino.. but were you to sit down and watch a movie simply because you enjoy watching a movie than this will not disappoint i assure you.

"One man can't make a difference, trust me." After a man (Adkins) grabs a bag full of 2 million dollars and runs to Mexico he thinks he is safe. He stops in the town of El Fronteras where he plans to hide out until he can safely return. After word of his bag gets around he must now do all he can to survive. You may be wondering why this sounds familiar. It's because a movie called "Get The Gringo" is the same thing. I have always wondered why two movies about the same thing usually come out at the same time. At least movies like "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" or "Mirror Mirror" and "Snow White and the Huntsman" tried to have different titles. This one is almost the same title even. This had more of a feel of early good Robert Rodriguez movies like "Desperado" in the beginning and slowly started to turn into a bad Rodriguez movie like "Once Upon A Time In Mexico". There really is nothing else to say other then this is a decent movie that I enjoyed, but I liked it better when it was called "Get The Gringo". Overall, not bad but too soon for a remake. I give it a B.

The most interesting thing about EL GRINGO is that it was shot in Sofia, Bulgaria which successfully stands in for Mexico. I would have thought the two countries couldn't be further apart but they do a pretty convincing job here. A shame, then, that the film itself is so pedestrian, with a lack of story really slowing things down. Some shaky, bleached-out cinematography doesn't help much either. Scott Adkins plays the usual drifter type who arrives in a corrupt town and soon finds himself battling a criminal gang. There's a fair bit of action, some of which is quite good, but it never really burns up the screen as a good action movie should. If you want to see a great Adkins movie from this era, check out UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING.