How I Spent My Summer Vacation (15)

HHH

Dir: Adrian Grunberg

With: Mel Gibson, Dean Norris, Peter Stormare, Kevin Hernandez

Running time: 95 minutes

Mel Gibson is never better than when delivering films that make you go "ouch" How I Spent My Summer Vacation, which he co-wrote as well as stars in, has scenes of toes being cut off, women being tortured, beatings, shootings and even a boy being used as an organ donor.

But it's also the best thing he's done since Apocalypto, a gritty, darkly comic prison thriller that tips its sombrero to the tough guy films of the late 1960s and early 70s from directors such as Sergio Leone, Walter Hill and Sam Peckinpah as well as the characters that have informed the actor's own on-screen past.

Gibson plays Driver, an ex-Army sniper turned career criminal who is first introduced in a clown's outfit driving a getaway car towards the Mexican border where, upon crash-landing there moments later his problems really begin. Corrupt federales steal his multi-million dollar haul for themselves and send him to El Pueblito, a prison where the inmates walk around with guns and drug trafficking and prostitution are rife. It's a human hell-hole so resolutely Mexican that Driver, or "the gringo", isn't expected to survive.

But by keeping quiet and observing, Driver slowly learns the tricks of the trade, even befriending a street-wise 10-year-old boy (Kevin Hernandez) and his mum (Dolores Heredia) and becoming an unlikely father figure while falling foul of the prison kingpin (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) who has been cultivating the boy's liver for his own.

And yet even as Driver ponders his own unlikely salvation, the question remains as to whether he can stay alive long enough to fashion an escape while also keeping one step ahead of the ruthless businessman (Peter Stormare) he stole the money from in the first place or the corrupt law officials from both sides of the border who want a piece of the pie.

Admittedly, there are a few problems with How I Spent My Summer Vacation in that it does leave itself open, at times, to accusations of misogyny and even racism (especially in the way that the Americans are smarter than the Mexicans for most of the time).

A glib voice-over employed by Driver also irritates and frequently pulls you out of the film's present, while the extreme nature of the violence will be unpalatable to some.

But there's a lot to enjoy too, not least in the film's defiantly non-PC, anything-goes approach or the nature of Gibson's typically committed performance. His Driver owes as much to some of his own back catalogue, whether it's Lethal Weapon's suicidal Martin Riggs or Payback's cold, calculated Porter, as it does to Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars era Man With No Name (the actor even references this at one point). It's fun to see the actor rolling back the years and lightning up a little, even if the character isn't always likeable.

Adrian Grunberg's direction also keeps things moving at a brisk pace while making maximum use of the film's striking locations. El Pueblito quickly becomes a character in its own right, having been based on a real-life namesake in Tijuana that was home to some 6000 prisoners before it was closed down in 2002, and whose city-like infrastructure has been recreated by Gibson's production team in another closed-down former penitentiary in Veracruz. It lends the film an authenticity and an identity that is very much its own, one that is shot through with sweaty desperation and near-constant danger.

The muscular nature of the action, on the other hand, owes its inspiration to both the stylised slow-mo of Peckinpah and the bone-crunching brutality of Gibson himself (with whom Grunberg served as assistant director on Apocalytpo as well as second unit director on Edge of Darkness). It doesn't pull any punches, yet is tempered by a nice line in pitch black humour.

Whether or not audiences are ready to embrace Gibson again as a leading man following his real-life indiscretions and the painful misfire that was The Beaver remains to be seen (the film has been kept from US cinemas) but How I Spent My Summer Vacation is a good step along the road to on-screen rehabilitation. It's a wild ride but worth the trip.