Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Micitype Pretty Good

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

MovieSoup This movie is not great. Unfortunately Mel Gibson has been in some very poor quality films and this is certainly one of them. The plot of this movie is dull, the characters are dull, the music is garbage and the editing is so poor that it actually gave me a headache.To start with the movie opens with a dog taking a wizz in a field followed by a man in a horse drawn cart. Then it cuts to a car chase with Gibson in the car wearing a clown suit (which is never explained)??? Why did we need those two first scenes? Why could it not start with the car chase in it? These sorts of scenes make it really confusing to watch the film because you sit there and ask "why were these scenes put in?" The car chase itself didn't make any sense as Mel crashes through a metal fence and he is in Mexico. I have actually seen the border between Mexico and the USA and trust me it is a lot more tightly controlled than a metal fence with a convenient ramp placed half way across it so you can do really cool car jumps through it. Sorry to go on so much about the opening scene but it really is that stupid and makes no sense at all.The overall plot is stupid and difficult to enjoy due to the pacing and editing that was used. The editing in this movie is all over the place with scenes being glued together with lots of cut scenes of babies crying, Mexicans making fajitas and dogs barking. Bad editing leads to the film not being structured in a seamless way and you really tell with movies like this. Stupid plot points ruin this story as well. If the prison town is so secure and even the big crime boss who owns the police can't escape then why can school girls walk right through this town? Also the fact that they let kids and civilians in and out of the prison to get around is inherently dangerous. Surely one of them would be held hostage, murdered or raped.The characters are dull and have no development to them. Gibson plays just an older more depressing version of Riggs from Lethal weapon and has no real report with both the kid his mother who he later fancies for no reason other than she is there. The kid is not a great child star but does okay and some of his scenes are passable with real emotion in them.The mother is the worst character by far. She is just there to be tortured and act scared the whole time and she can't even do that right. She fake cries a lot which is just terribly distracting and brings the tone of the scene down. Her "romantic" scene with Gibson at the end when he asks "can I bite you?" and she says "maybe" is terrible, creepy, flat and not convincing at all. Their whole relationship and the back and forth they are supposed to have is utterly non-existent and is just bad character development on the scripts part. This movie is directed by a guy (Adrian Gruberg) with only two directing credits to his name, this being the first film he has directed. Every director has to start somewhere however his inexperience is what leads to this film being poorly shot with terrible camera work, cinematography and bad direction of characters on camera. The CG blood in this film is awful and you can tell it is not used to the right effect. I have no problem with CG blood when it is done well, like in the film Zodiac however in this you can really tell it is CG. The worst thing is that in some cases actual blood packs would have worked way better and added a nice practical effect to the stilted action scenes. In this film they seem to have got a hold of what Americans think typical Mexican music is and just put it haphazardly and ineffectively into this film. The music in this is so bad that it actually pains me to say that even I could do a better film score and I'm an idiot. For me music makes a film better and when you just put generic Spanish/Mexican music in a film just because it is set in Mexico the music adds no feel to a film. From Dusk till Dawn uses music very well and that is set in Mexico, so why couldn't this film do that?The only thing I loved about this film was its short running time and I would not really recommend this movie to anyone interested in film. If you want a dumb story with glaring plot holes and lots of meaningless violence please watch this.

Anssi Vartiainen Mel Gibson's career is definitely one of those that resemble a roller coaster more than anything else. From Mad Max, Lethal Weapon and Braveheart to being the laughingstock of the whole media, he hasn't really shined in recent years.Which means that this film is even more enjoyable because once more you get to see Gibson playing the badass we knew and came to love in the past. The movie opens with an American criminal (Gibson) in a getaway car, trying to elude the police by crossing the boundary into Mexico. The only problem is, he's carrying a lot of loot with him and the Mexican police goes dollar-sign-eyes faster than you can yell Speedy Gonzales. Thus they throw him behind bars.What I like the most about this film is the prison itself. El Pueblito is a beautiful place with a character and soul of its own. Kids can live with their incarcerated parents and go freely, you can buy Pepsi from a corner store, drugs are freely distributed in little shacks by a semi-professional medical practitioners and the whole place is almost like a really high-tech prison you could find in a first world country. The only difference being that those are this varied because the country is so developed. This prison is so varied and "open" because the place is so corrupt. Very cool place and an excellent place for an action thriller.Unfortunately the plot doesn't quite deliver. Gibson's character is very resourceful and interesting, plus the kid character (Kevin Hernandez) he interacts with is not half bad, but the rest of the cast, especially the villains, are pretty much cookie cutter and thus dull. I don't really care about their motivations, I don't care about their past and I don't care about what happens to them. I was much more interested in learning more about Gibson's character, but very little is revealed about him. The film makes some references, but you can tell that Gibson is just spinning the yarn.Nevertheless, I do like the film and it's definitely worth checking out if you want to see a good film from Gibson for a change. Not a masterpiece by any means, but a decent film on all accounts.

shaws35 All the reviews I read about this movie were amazing. People rant and rave about it, but I don't get it. The storyline is nothing new it was just the typical bland action film to me. The premise where an American gets thrown into a foreign jail has been done before, and done better. Maybe I'm missing the point... Was it supposed to be a comedy? I was bored honestly...I thought Mel Gibson's character was cheesy and the fight scene where he was throwing bombs made me laugh. It was totally predictable and unrealistic.. Usually I come on here and trust the reviews but I have to say I totally disagree on this one, I turned it off half way through.

Dark Jedi I have always liked Mel Gibson and I really do not care how drunk or politically incorrect he might be. I still like to see him in movies and this is a surprisingly good movie. The movie had a proper theatrical premier in most countries except USA where it went straight to VOD which I find a bit surprising. It is a lot better movie than much of the stuff that are shown in theaters. I suspect the politically correct hypocrites had something to do with that.Personally, I found this movie surprisingly good. Mel Gibson fit the role very well and made a quite good performance. The settings with the bizarre prison which looked like a cross between Alcatraz and Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen was quite cool. It was the kind of setting that I would not have been surprised to find in a Tarantino-movie. I also liked the cynical and somewhat ironical voice-over by Gibson.The story was okay. Perhaps not the most believable one but good enough for this kind of action movie. Speaking of action, there were indeed some decent action in the movie but it is not like the movie is overloaded with it. It is nicely spread out and once the action starts it is pretty good. It is also true that some scenes are a wee bit gruesome but I am not sure that I agree with the R-rating. Most of the time that rating felt a bit over the top. Still, I rather have a R-rated movie with cuts than a PG-13 with lots of silly cuts in it.There were some silly bits of course, like how easy Mel could evade the prison and make a "business-trip" to the states when he finally felt like it and the entire business of performing transplantation surgery in a filthy prison. Mel might have found that "put it back" statement funny when he wrote it but it came out rather silly to me.Bottom line is that this was a quite enjoyable movie. A perfect after-work movie when you feel like parking your brain somewhere in the garage with your car and just sit down and watch something requiring a minimum of concentration.