Tuesday Trailer Review: “El Gringo”

How can you see a movie title like El Gringo and not want to watch the trailer?

Well, good thing there’s a trailer. Now we don’t have to actually watch it. El Gringo adds on to this growing sentiment that, if you don’t know what to do for a movie… just make it Mexican. And, you know, if you’re thinking about making an intelligent Western that spans a horizon or plays with catchy, clever dialogue… don’t worry, because you don’t have to.

Sure, Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado and Tarantino’s everything have upped the ante recently, while 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboys and Aliens have frothed some exciting rabies into a dead dog of a genre, but it’s clear that the rest of Hollywood is just content to… stop trying.

El Gringo stars a guy named Scott Adkins, who looks like a mix of Drake from the Playstation games and a Dove soap model, but without the smoothness. It’s about as vanilla a selection as Emily from The Bachelor(ette) or Mitt Romney as President, and when the biggest thing you’ve got going for you is one line from Christian Slater, you know you need to hit the drawing board, throwing the sketch into the can, and toss the easel out the window.

Thankfully, El Gringo has the only thing that a Mexican shoot ‘em up has nowadays, which is two hot women with dark hair. Sure, they’re not “Salma-Hayek-hot” or “Penelope-Cruz-talented,” but it takes only five seconds of this trailer to make you realize that nobody here is trying.

(*If you can’t tell, After Dark Films is not paying us to write this blog.)

Here’s El Gringo (2012) starring Mexican Stereotypes and Quentin Tarantino’s Spunk: