Mel Gibson back in action this May with Get The Gringo…on demand?

Mel Gibson, the illustrious, the infamous, the outcast. To say that Mel has had a rough past couple years would be putting it lightly. Despite it all, he’s still found time to sneak into a few movies and now he’s rolling the dice on a new venue for his action/comedy GET THE GRINGO.

Directed by Adrian Grunberg from a script he wrote with Gibson, Get The Gringo is an R-rated romp with “action, dark humor and plenty of violence.”

Here’s the synopsis from Deadline:

Gibson plays Driver, who, during a high-speed car chase with the U.S. Border Patrol and a bleeding body in his back seat, crashes into the border wall as he tries to escape. He survives, only to be placed inside a hard-core Mexican prison where he enters the strange and dangerous world of “El Pueblito.” There, he finds unlikely survival guidance from a 10-year-old kid who shows him the ropes.

Gibson will distribute through FOX via DirecTV, which will debut GET THE GRINGO on May 1st for the price of $10.99 per home viewing. Some may view this as a step back for Gibson, but since he began funding his own films he’s seen some massive success, especially with PASSION OF THE CHRIST, which cost $30 million to make and brought in $612 million worldwide.

Here’s the trailer for GET THE GRINGO:

I’m a Gibson fan. Always have been. He’s said and done some dumb shit, but haven’t we all? He just happened to have his laundry aired for all to see (and hear). Personally, I don’t care about his personal life. I just want to see his work.

Currently, he’s prepping a Viking epic written by BRAVEHEART‘s Randall Wallace and is also planning to direct a film about Jewish warrior Judah Maccabee, who teamed with his father and four brothers to lead the Jewish revolt against the Greek-Syrian armies that had conquered Judea in the second century B.C.

GET THE GRINGO hits DirecTV on May 1st, 2012.