Buckle Up for Safety

Gringo (2018) was three or four selections down in my queue, but Netflix sometimes skips over movies, even if they aren't in Wait status. I didn't mind in this case. I'd been planning to watch this, just never got around to it.

It starts with two high-powered executives, Joel Edgerton and Charlize Theron, having office sex, when they get a phone call. It's from Mexico - their employee, Daniel Oyelowo, is screaming. He's been kidnapped. We then jump to Three Days Earlier...

We meet Daniel, a nerdy Nigerian immigrant to Chicago. He lives with wife Thandie Newton, who maybe henpecks him. He works for Edgerton and Theron's pharmaceutical company, largely because he's Edgerton's buddy (although Edgerton is a bit of a swine). He's planning to go to the company's Mexico office in the next day to straighten out an inventory problem. When he finds out that Edgerton and Theron are going too, he worries that the rumors of a buyout are true, and that they are tagging along to figure out how to replace him. 

He is partly right. They are selling the company, but they are going down to Mexico because they know the plant manager is selling their product, a cannabis derivative, to a crime boss. They want to stop it so as not to screw up the sale. At dinner in Mexico, he leaves his phone on the table and records them talking about their plans. The next day, when they go back to the US, Oyelowo checks into a cheap hotel and convinces the dim clerks to help him stage a phony kidnapping. He figures the company's anti-kidnapping insurance will pay out and he'll take the money. But Edgerton (the slime) let that insurance lapse. So Edgerton calls his brother, Sharlto Copley, an ex-mercenary, now international aid worker, to go rescue Oyelowo.

I'm leaving out Amanda Seyfried, a nice girl who has been brought to Mexico by her dirtbag boyfriend. Harry Treadaway, as camouflage. He's really there to bring back a sample of the cannabis drug. Also left out are the Mexican gangsters who really do kidnap Oyelowo, and the tracking device that Copley has injected into Oyelowo. 

I'm leaving out a lot in fact. It almost doesn't matter, because it's mostly about how sweet, trusting, and sincere Oyelowo's character is. He isn't the kind of underdog that everyone steps on, although he tends in that direction. He's too smart for that. But you do want him to succeed all the way. And he does - partly because he's good, partly because he's lucky. And partly because he buckles his seatbelt, when the gangsters don't. 

The Seyfried/Treadaway subplot is kind of undercooked, and could have been dropped - but at least they don't have a romance. Newton gets done dirty by the plot, and I wish she hadn't been set up as a villain, but she does all right with it. I think the movie could have been kinder to the dopey Mexican hotel clerks, too. But that's mostly because this is a sweet, kind-hearted movie with an amazing cast. It was fun to watch.

In conclusion, this is one of the first "Amazon originals" - I could have watched it for free on streaing any time. But I still kind of prefer physical media.