Starring: Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irvine, Angie Cepeda

Director: Emilio Aragón
Released: 2013

Mood: If you’re so overworked that you don’t have the mental capacity to appreciate a really good movie so you want to watch something with lots of distracting action and not much plot.

“You gotta cut loose and go for it. You gotta go for it every goddamn chance you get. Because the chances run out.” – Red Bovie (Robert Duvall)

Seeing Robert Duvall on any movie poster is always going to pique my interest. Seeing him on a Western movie poster is definitely cause for excitement, which is why I was super stoked to watch A Night in Old Mexico.

 

Duvall has made some of the genre’s best films, like Lonesome Dove, the original True Grit, and Open Range. He was brilliant in Geronimo: An American Legend and Broken Trail. He also made Wild Horses, which is less than outstanding despite his great performance.

 

Unfortunately, A Night in Old Mexico is more like Wild Horses: it’s a platform to showcase Duvall, while the plot does little for everyone else around him.

 

It’s not a BAD movie. I felt entertained pretty much the whole way through because there was lots of action. But long-time readers of my reviews will tell you that I’m not exactly known for my discerning taste in movies…

 

photo of the dvd A Night in Old Mexico leaning up against white siding with a mud splatter on it

 

A Night in Old Mexico is a modern Western that starts out in Texas. An old rancher named Red (Duvall) is being packed off to a trailer park.

 

Red’s cattle and horses have been sold out from under him, his land is being developed, and he’s about to give up the ghost. He sits in his barn, pistol to his head, telling God to find someone else to pick on. It’s quite harrowing. Duvall does a phenomenal job in this scene.

 

But then his estranged grandson Gally shows up (Jeremy Irvine), hoping to connect. Red ends up basically taking Gally hostage on a road trip to ‘Old Mexico’, where Red wants to pursue his idea of real living – booze, women, and all-night partying.

 

They briefly pick up two shady hitchhikers, out of necessity to pay for gas. This encounter leads to Red and Gally being followed, and a Mexican hitman taking interest in their hidden cargo. For some reason a gorgeous ‘stripper with a heart of gold’ (Angie Cepeda) takes a shine to Red. And slowly, predictably, Red and Gally bond over their thrilling experiences.

 

illustration of a moustache that is curled at the ends

 

Other than that initial scene with the gun in the barn, Duvall’s performance is a single note of ‘I’m old so I can say and do what I want’.

 

But the character of Red Bovie is also exactly that – an old guy who is going to do whatever the hell he wants. So whether it was an intentional choice or just Duvall being himself (he was 82 at the time of filming), it works. We’ve all met at least one Red Bovie in our lives.

 

I saw some other reviews that said nobody other than Duvall was any good, but I think Jeremy Irvine did a solid job with what he was given, which was unfortunately not a whole lot. Angie Cepeda is also strong as Patty Wafers, despite the character’s terrible name and even worse arc.

 

The idea that this beautiful, talented badass Latina sees a belligerent old white guy start a bar fight and falls in love with him, it’s ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. They have no chemistry at all. I honestly thought Patty was going to be the love interest of Gally until almost the end. But I guess Duvall saw Cepeda’s talent beneath the questionable script, because she’s also in Wild Horses.

 

illustration of a moustache that is curled at the ends

 

There are some aspects of A Night in Old Mexico that seem like outright laziness in writing and production.

 

Like, how could an old guy who reeks of beer because he’s been drinking and driving all day, with a backpack full of drug money in his backseat, get through the serious AF Mexican border guards? And we’re supposed to believe that they also let in two scruffy hitchhikers, who not only passed the background checks required to get Visas but also demonstrated proof of funds and accommodation in Mexico?

 

And then when Red and Gally get into Mexico, they see a sign for Estado de Mexico and Morelos, both of which are states in the central south of Mexico – nowhere near the Texas border.

 

I could go on, but I won’t. You’re not watching A Night in Old Mexico expecting a realistic story and deep, emotional storytelling. You want to see Robert Duvall being a boss, delivering an aspirational character for cranky old ranchers across North America, and you get it.

 

Plus, it’s better than Cry Macho.