Everybody’s favourite anti-Semite Mel Gibson returns to our screens in How I Spent My Summer Vacation, a back to basics action thriller set in a Mexican prison. The film was formerly known as Get the Gringo – is it too preposterous to presume that after the latest allegations involving Gibson’s intolerance ‘issues’, the film’s distributors decided to opt out of lumbering their film with a title that carries anything approaching baggage pertaining to race? Maybe. Whatever the reason, a pretty full-on actioner has been given the kind of title one would probably assume belongs to a weak Katherine Heigl rom com.
The film begins with Gibson driving a getaway car in a clown mask with a bag full of someone else’s money, hurtling along the US-Mexican border. After being apprehended, the officials decide to impound him south of the border in a prison which in fact operates more like a small, self-governing township (in reality the Ignacio Allende Prison). There he encounters a young boy (Kevin Hernandez) with a deeply personal connection to Carlos (Tenoch Huerta), the prison’s big fish. Gibson (who is credited as ‘Driver’; a decision likely to draw unfavourable comparisons to Drive), takes it upon himself to offer the boy his protection, whilst busting heads, blowing stuff up and generally being a nuisance.
I am of the opinion that a person’s personal life shouldn’t colour an opinion of their ability to do their job. As much as I am of the opinion that Roman Polanski is a child rapist, I equally feel he’s a very good filmmaker. This of course swings both ways; just because a person is famous or creatively brilliant doesn’t mean they should be treated sympathetically in a court of law. I attempted to adhere to this philosophy when watching Summer Vacation. It proved a little difficult; Gibson’s character is (intentionally) almost as distasteful as the man has revealed himself to be in real life. Credit to him, he’s certainly not gunning for a sympathy vote in this film; his performance is barbed, cocksure and nearly approaches charismatic.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation is also written and produced by Gibson (among others). Its director Adrian Grunberg mostly draws his CV from first assistant director roles, frequently on Gibson productions; so it’s not too far a stretch to suggest Gibson had input in the physical shooting of the film too.
Leading man aside, the film itself is fairly unremarkable (it is not receiving a theatrical release in the US). The action and the film’s depictions of violence are mostly unrestrained, which is welcome. Beyond that and Gibson’s surprisingly not awful screen presence, there seems little more to say for the film. The third act goes a somewhat off the rails – an extended sequence in which Gibson dupes bad guys by pretending to be an associate of Clint Eastwood is vaguely amusing but mostly serve to confuse and detracts from the tighter, prison-centric sections that make up the rest of the film. The ending scene is also categorically awful and feels like it’s been spliced in from another film.
Whilst far from a car crash, How I Spent My Summer Vacation is otherwise almost wholly unexceptional. To be honest, if you’re looking for an action-packed slugfest in which an aggrieved white bloke takes an ethnically different child under his wing, you’d probably be better off watching The Stathe in Safe; where the most ‘interesting’ thing about its star is that he used to be a national-level diver.
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