Pun Salad

Mel Gibson's latest movie went more or less directly to DVD in the USA. That's what happens, I guess, when you self-destruct on booze and bigotry. Still, it's a pretty decent movie. Mel also wrote the screenplay.

Mel plays career criminal "Driver", and as the movie opens, he's fresh off a robbery with piles of cash and a gutshot partner coughing up blood. He's also being hotly pursued near the US-Mexican border by cops. Out of options, he aims his vehicle at the border barrier, crashing through it into Mexico.

Before you can say "seemed like a good idea at the time", corrupt cops have grabbed the loot, and sent Driver off to "El Pueblito", a prison where inmates' families are allowed to live. It's an otherwise nasty place where life is ultracheap, corruption rampant, and sanitation an unknown concept. As Driver muses in a voiceover: "Is this a prison, or the world's shittiest mall?"

Driver's initial goals are simple: survival, retrieval of "his" money, and escape. But he gets involved with a "special" kid and his mother; the reason the kid is "special" turns out to be an important plot point; it turns out that the guys who actually run the prison are pretty high up on the evil scale. Driver must manipulate a complex web of criminal factions in order to prevail.

It's rated a very solid R for (according to the MPAA) "strong bloody violence, pervasive language, some drug use and sexual material." If anything, that's an understatement. I would have also added "and ubiquitous filth", but I guess the MPAA doesn't consider literal cleanliess in its ratings.