Old Gringo (1989) Columbia/Drama-Adventure RT: 119 minutes Rated R (violence, brief nudity) Director: Luis Puenzo Screenplay: Aida Bortnik and Luis Puenzo Music: Lee Holdridge Cinematography: Felix Monti Release date: October 6, 1989 (US) Cast: Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Smits, Patricio Contreras, Jenny Gago, Gabriela Roel, Sergio Calderon, Guillermo Rios, Jim Metzler, Samuel Valdez, De La Torre, Anne Pitoniak, Pedro Armendariz Jr., Stanley Grover, Josefina Echanove, Pedro Damian, Maya Zapata. Box Office: $3.5M (US)
Rating: **
I distinctly recall seeing the trailer for Old Gringo in summer ’88. It was supposed to come out in October of that year. Then, at some point, the studio yanked it from the schedule and pushed its release back a year. This usually indicates the studio wants to work on it some more before its public unveiling. I can’t find any documentation of this on-line; it’s a combination of memory and speculation.
What I know for certain is Old Gringo is a mess. Whatever work the makers allegedly did on it didn’t help. It was roundly booed at Cannes. Audience members at the Philadelphia screening walked out on it. It got terrible reviews. It absolutely bombed at theaters, making back only a fraction of its $27 million budget. Old Gringo has a lot of problems not the least of which it’s boring. It would be quicker and easier to list its good points of which there are two: Gregory Peck and the train scene. The rest of it they can keep.
Jane Fonda (Coming Home) stars as Harriet Winslow, an American schoolteacher who gets swept up in the Mexican Revolution of 1913 after leaving behind her claustrophobic existence to accept a position as governess to the children of a wealthy landowner. When she finally arrives at their hacienda, they’re long gone. Instead, she finds that she’s been tricked into smuggling weapons for the servants to aid the revolutionaries in their fight for freedom against the Federales. Led by General Arroyo (Smits, Running Scared), they take the hacienda in the name of their leader Pancho Villa.
Harriet finds herself attracted to two men for different reasons. Of course, she’s fated to end up in the arms of Arroyo, representative of her previously unexplored uninhibited side. After a lifetime of suppressing her feelings under the harsh rule of her domineering mother (Pitoniak, Hiding Out), she’s finally free to experience life on her own terms including a passionate affair with a man of action.
The other fellow is an elderly American expatriate (Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird) who’s come to Mexico to join the revolution and die in anonymity. We know he’s Ambrose Bierce, the writer who famously disappeared after joining Villa’s army as an “observer”. Harriet doesn’t realize it until late in the movie. She heard his farewell to America speech in Washington D.C., but never saw his face. It was his words that inspired her to start following her own heart rather than her mother’s wishes. Theirs is more of a meeting of the minds than anything else. You could even call it a surrogate father-daughter relationship.
Old Gringo sounds good on paper, but fails to translate to the big screen. Director Luis Puenzo (The Official Story) wants his first American film to be a sweeping epic along the lines of Doctor Zhivago and Reds. He wants it badly, too badly. Instead, it’s just bad and not the funny kind either. After a fairly strong start, Old Gringo flatlines. This occurs just after the scene where the revolutionaries commandeer a train and crash it through the wall surrounding the estate they ultimately take over. From this point on, Old Gringo grinds to halt. It meanders aimlessly through a storyline that never grabs the viewer’s interest. The narrative has a disconnected feel. There’s no flow to it. The romantic aspects fail to ignite so much as a single spark of passion. As drama, it’s dull. The viewer doesn’t get swept up in it. Puenzo, who co-wrote the disjointed script with Aida Bortnik, doesn’t give us characters worth caring about. It doesn’t help that two-thirds of the main cast deliver lackluster performances.
Fonda turns in one of her worst performances as Harriet, a naïve woman tasting independence for the first time in her life. I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be, but 51YO Fonda looks too old to be playing a character going through such things. She delivers her lines in a self-conscious, overly literary manner. This is especially true of the narration provided by her character. Her performance doesn’t ring true, not even slightly. Smits is just okay as Arroyo, a man haunted by a secret that comes to the forefront after the siege at the hacienda. It affects his behavior to the point of insanity. He doesn’t possess the necessary intensity to make any of it convincing. Peck, on the other hand, is terrific as Bierce, a drunkard brimming with cynicism and sardonic wit. Old Gringo might have been a better movie had it focused more on his story and less on Fonda’s character. There are many theories surrounding the writer’s disappearance; this movie tells the most widely accepted one.
Puenzo tries his best, but fails to hit the mark with Old Gringo. To be fair, it’s probably not all his fault. I suspect the studio is partly to blame for its half-assed feel. A subplot involving a journalist (Metzler, River’s Edge) covering the events in Mexico is introduced only to be dropped immediately. Did the studio cut out his scenes? What’s the deal?
I stop short of calling Old Gringo a dismal failure because of Peck and the train scene. In the spirit of generosity, I’ll call it a mediocre film. Given the talent involved and the director’s lofty intentions, it should have been a great film. I think I’m starting to understand why Columbia delayed its release. A year wasn’t long enough.
