The plot involves an American lifetime criminal played by Gibson, who is unnamed (but known in the credits as The Driver) who with his partner has apparently stolen a huge amount of money right by the Mexican border. He crashes his getaway car through the fence dividing the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is well-known for its corrupt police forces, so the Mexican officers see the stacks of money and innocently state they will take this case, now that the robbers are on their soil. They throw the Driver into a prison called El Pueblito (modeled after real prisons in Mexico). El Pueblito, as per its name, is a little town, where you can buy anything, has many services--even illegal ones, and as a character says, “the world’s worst mall” is an apt description of this setting. Prisoners can also pay to have their families live with them, so that the family unit can stay together (yeah, I don’t know who thought this was a good thing nor how it punishes the prisoner).
Driver bides his time to make an escape, by observing everyone and studying the hierarchy in El Pueblito. Despite its restrictive setting, there is a lot of money moving around El Pueblito, much of it passing through the hands of a big shot criminal, Javi (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), who gets to come and go as he pleases and takes his cut off every deal that goes on. His lackeys are his brother and cousin.
Another guy, Bill (Dean Norris), some sort of shady government lawyer, tries to get Driver out of prison in trade for a cut of the money that was stolen. But Driver is not interested in working with anyone but himself.
Other key characters are a widow and her son (Dolores Heredia, Kevin Hernandez, known as the kid and the kid’s mother). The kid sees Driver observing everyone, as well as Driver's ingenious robbery of a drug dealer during a fire, and the Driver grudgingly takes the kid under his wing. The kid reveals a hatred of Javi due to Javi having his father killed for a despicable reason, that threatens the kid’s life too, but ironically Javi protects the kid’s life, at least for now. The Driver eventually mentors him as a father figure and helping him defeat Javi.
Although the plot is outlandish, it can still be quite believeable. The story is well-written/plotted and well-acted. Other than Gibson there are a couple of character actors, Bob Gunton and Peter Stormare, but their roles are pretty small. Most of the rest of the cast is Hispanic and unknown to me, all who did a good job, especially the kid and the actor who played Javi. How El Pueblito is portrayed seems like it is some made-up place, but during a Q&A session the panel said that it indeed was styled after a real prison (they used an actual prison that was recently closed) and many former prisoners were used as extras. Though on its face this movie is not something that would seem to appeal to me, I liked it and though it was an original idea and well made.
This type of film seems to be a pretty good example of a summertime film, so seeing it released as a cable VOD and via other avenues will give some idea where the distribution of movies are headed these days.
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