Gringo (2018)

rating: ****

the story: A ruthless company attempts to use one of its most loyal employees as a patsy in Mexico.

review: When I saw the trailer for Gringo, I thought it looked like a delightful farce.  I was interested in it anyway, as it starred Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton, two of my favorite modern actors.  But more intriguing, from the trailer, was David Oyelowo, the would-be patsy whose reactions were hilariously over-the-top to the chaos happening around him.

And that's what you get the movie itself, too, and that's more than satisfying.  The best part is that it casts Oyelowo in an entirely new light, for me.  I was previously exposed to him only, as far as I know, in Selma, where I thought he was horribly miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a result I didn't think much of him as an actor in general.  But Gringo proves me wrong.  Selma's problems don't seem to have been Oyelowo's problems at all, its creative shortcomings a result of the creative process.  Gringo is what the creative process working the right way looks like.

At heart it's a massive criticism of how greedy the business sector continues to be, long after the supposed "greed decade" of the '80s.  Theron and Edgerton (whose brother Nash directed the movie) play the business colleagues trying to save their own skins at Oyelowo's expense.  Edgerton famously has a passive face, expressionless, and I think it held him back early in his career, but he's managed to work around it thanks to his considerable acting chops (best exemplified, I think, in Warrior and Exodus: Gods and Kings), to the point where he can guide his own career now.  His ruthless businessman in Gringo in particular uses his peculiar screen presence to full advantage, that passive face playing into is callousness as he tries to have his cake and eat it, too, backstabbing the haplessly loyal and trusting Oyelowo (until Oyelowo realizes that he's been had and turns the tables on him).

Sharlto Copley, who moreso than director Neill Blomkamp managed to parlay District 9 into a fascinating career, plays Edgerton and Theron's muscle who ends up siding with Oyelowo, and is another great presence in the movie.  There's also Thandie Newton (can't believe she was ever allowed to vanish from the forefront), Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck in supporting roles.

Gringo is a movie I think could very easily settle into a cult favorite, and a career highlight for a number of its actors, especially Oyelowo.