Excellent adaptation.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

First, the good: gunplay was spot on, set design was very good as the Pueblito looked gritty and foreboding, and the soundtrack was pleasant to the ear. Lots of action, too, albeit a bit over the top.The bad? It was filmed using digital video. Nice for commercials, bad for feature-length films. The digital sheen of video subtracts from the "feel" of the movie, making it seem sterile and amateurish.Mel Gibson was, well, Mel Gibson, just a little older. There's no mistaking he was Riggs from Lethal Weapon. Everything was intact - the wise cracks, the mannerisms, the ultra bravado, etc. That a top level businessman could be fooled into thinking a random phone call from Clint Eastwood could grant him an audience seems preposterous. In fact, quite a few things seemed preposterous. How convenient that Mel should not money retrieve the money he'd stolen, but also gain a wife and son in the process!This film really wants the audience to have a suspension of disbelief to enjoy the film. Maybe I would've liked it better if I was loaded up on Modelo's like half the characters in the flick.

GET THE GRINGO (aka WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION) is classic Mel Gibson. He's a battered old bank robber - just like in PAYBACK - who stumbles across the border into Mexico with a couple of million and a dead partner. The Mex cops nick his cash, to spend on hookers and German cars, whilst throwing him into the slammer. Based on a real life experiment (which inevitably ended badly), the prison is sorta-open; with the criminals carrying guns, dealing drugs and even living with their families inside. The only rule is that escape means death. Mel gives the place plenty of sarcastic voice-over, all whilst casing the joint, making friends with a cigarette-crazy kid and even romancing the boy's mother. Soon he's climbing the criminal ladder, even as the people whose money he stole come looking for him. Cue some satisfyingly Peckinpah-esque blood'n'slo-mo shootouts, as well as a slightly random digression from the prison. It's gory, foul-mouthed and cynical...but somehow still has its heart in the right place as Mel finds redemption (he is Catholic after all) and settles scores. A taut 90 minutes long, this old-school thriller ought to have re- established his career after his drunken ZOG-ranting but alas...

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION is a more entertaining film than it has a right to be. It sees Mel Gibson playing another half-crazed criminal type who winds up in a sprawling Mexican prison that looks more like a shanty town than the usual hellhole. This is a prison where kids and women live in peace alongside the convicts and where all manner of backstabbing (literal and metaphorical) goes on on a regular basis.The plot is lightweight and packed with humour, most of it deriving from Gibson's undeniable grizzled charm. Basically it's a film where he starts with nothing and has to rise to the top by outwitting all the various factions and villains pitted against him. The film's heart is the relationship between Gibson's character and a streetwise kid, played by the very good Kevin Hernandez. This central relationship helps to ground and humanise what would otherwise have been a very superficial and rather unappealing movie.Still, this is well made and fast-paced, although it's not quite the action movie they'd have you believe. Gibson is excellent, as is always the case, and the inventive narrative barely gives you time to draw breath before skipping to another situation. It's goofy but has undeniable charm at the same time.

(57%) Gibson goes back to basics in this grimy Mexican set action prison drama. Those out there looking for bullet-ridden action set pieces on a treadmill set to 10 with one after another will find this maybe a bit lacking, as this is a movie that, like Mel's character, wants to use its brains a degree more than its brawn, with much focus on plot, setting, and character. After all that's said and done Mel Gibson is still a strong lead, and the movie is at least somewhat different from the typical action flicks out there making this a decent addition to Mel's back catalogue, even if it is pretty standard stuff in terms of entertainment.