If the title of Adrian 🐓Grunberg’s film makes it sound like some sub- coming-of-ager, the attention-hooking opening seque🐟nce will put your mind at rest.

With a boot-load of cash, and a dying partner in the backseat, Mel Gibson’s Driver is trying to outrun the U.S. Border Pa🌳trol. His answer? Smash his getaway vehicle through the dividing wall, landing him on Mexican soil, and into the waiting arms of the corrupt local police.

Said cops decide that driver needs a spell in ‘El Pueblito’, a notorious jail in Tijuana th𝐆at allows families of inmates to live inside prison walls with them.

The result is a microcosm of society, or as Driver puts it: “Is this a prison or the world’s shittiest mall?” A thriving꧃ hell-hole, where prostitutes mingle wi🧸th drug addicts, you can even buy your heroin from the ‘smack shack’. In time, Driver forms an uneasy alliance with a 10-year-old kid (Kevin Hernandez).

While making his directorial debut, Grunberg – Gibson’s 1st AD on – neatly walks the action-co🌸medy tightrope here. Prison life is painted in evocative colours, while Gibson’s voiceover adds wry commentary throughout.

If the story doesn’t strain its🐻elf in pursuit of originality, it does build to a satisfying conclusion, Driver becoming a target of Frank (Peter Stormare), the ruthless criminal he stole from.

With no puppet in sight, Gibson is on decent form – you’d have to go back to Maverick to find him enjoying himself this much – not least in a gem of a scene where, to fool one character, he impersonates Clint Eastwood on the telephone. That, at least, will make your day.