An alarmingly inept crime caper that substituted common sense for star power strikes a deal on streaming

There’s nothing wrong with an industry veteran calling in a few favors when they decide to make their feature-length directorial debut, but Nash Edgerton’s Gringo could have really benefited from a tighter screenplay and a fresher approach to the knockabout crime caper, because the end result was a disappointing misfire derivative of many vastly superior movies.

The multi-talented actor, writer, stunt performer, editor, and filmmaker rounded up a star-studded cast packed full of recognizable names, which included star and producer Charlize Theron, his brother Joel Edgerton, David Oyolewo, Amanda Seyfried, Sharlto Copley, Thandiwe Newton, Bill Maher, and Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris for some reason, but Gringo was a damp squib.

Respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of only 40 and 38 percent paint the picture of a middling contribution to a cinematic setup that’s only becoming more familiar by the day, with a large number of reviews making a point of noting that wrangling a raft of A-listers is no substitute for an increasingly convoluted narrative that avoids originality and common sense in favor of tropes and formula.

Nonetheless, the light and breezy crime story has always been an easy sell to the streaming masses, with Gringo shrugging off its less than stellar reputation to stake out a spot on the Starz most-watched charts, per FlixPatrol. It’s an overly-familiar tale of double-crossing, back-stabbing, drug running, and life or death decisions, but one that admittedly isn’t the worst possible method of spending 110 minutes at the weekend when there’s nothing better to do.