The actor-director seemed unemployable after a string of antisemitic and racist outbursts. But steady work since and a new comedy vehicle suggest his time in the wilderness is up

The long, complicated saga known as the Never-Ending Rehabilitation of Mel Gibson unspools another chapter. Gibson is playing his most prominent on-screen role, in Daddy’s Home 2, since his obscenity-filled antisemitic meltdown on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway on a hot July night in Malibu more than a decade ago.

Given the serendipity of long-range movie-release schedules, how was Gibson to know that his latest bid for a soft landing back in the box-office charts, and back in the warm bosom of filmgoers worldwide, would take place during a tsunami of revelations of sexual chicanery and all-round vileness among top Hollywood figures and Washington politicians?

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Then again, Gibson may have accidentally done himself a huge favour by getting lost in the shuffle. Outrage about Harvey Weinstein’s predations shifts to those of Kevin Spacey, who has been airbrushed from his latest film, and then seeks newer problematic figures. In the US, where Daddy’s Home 2 has been in cinemas for several weeks, Gibson’s reappearance might have excited more comment had the film not instantly vanished into a vortex of terrible reviews.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mel GIbson and Mark Wahlberg in Daddy’s Home 2. Photograph: Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures

Certainly, his troubling transgressions – claiming, as he did to his arresting officer, that: “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” before asking her: “Are you a Jew?” – felt no less serious at the time. More menacing still was the tape of Gibson’s drunken fight with his partner Oksana Grigorieva in 2010, salted as it was with ugly, racist comments and threats.

Gibson put his head down, stayed quiet awhile, and then began the long slow road back to something like respectability – if that was even possible. He’s been on it for 10 years now, and it’s been an interesting trajectory. He was helped somewhat by the worldwide success of Apocalypto, which he directed and produced but in which he did not appear, at the end of 2006. But, as long ago as 2010, I attended the junket for Edge of Darkness, perceived as a comeback for Gibson after a suitable interval of mourning. The movie flopped, no comeback. Loyal friend Jodie Foster directed him in another flop, The Beaver, so Gibson tried another tack.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rehabilitated … Mel Gibson was nominated for an Oscar in 2017 for directing Hacksaw Ridge. Photograph: Jim Smeal/BEI/Shutterstock

It’s one which often parallels that of his peer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, after his stint as governor of California. Schwarzenegger’s pre-gubernatorial film career had ended with a mid-campaign resurrection of every allegation of his boorishly handsy behaviour on various sets where he was all-powerful and impossible to fend off. He weathered further scandal as his governorship ended, with revelations that he fathered a child with his housekeeper, which resulted in his divorce from Maria Shriver.

Schwarzenegger by then was as tarnished as Gibson, and in ways more relevant to the current scandals. But like Gibson, he is, to borrow TS Garp’s formulation, “pre-disastered” and is thus – in accordance with bone-deep American redemption narratives – unlikely to endure a second roasting by the tabloids … yet.

Like Schwarzenegger, Gibson has been stuck in a holding pattern of low-budget movies that go more or less straight to streaming, interspersed with appearances in sequels to successful franchises of indifferent quality – their paths crossed in The Expendables 3. Even Schwarzenegger couldn’t sell Terminator Genisys, though, and Gibson got vetoed off The Hangover 2 by members of the cast and crew including, allegedly, Zach Galifianakis.

No matter what the fate of Daddy’s Home 2, the truth is that Gibson is already seen as rehabilitated by many in Hollywood. He’s done rehab, the 12 steps, anger-management therapy, and has made whatever restitution he plausibly can to, reportedly, Holocaust charities and organisations. At last year’s Oscars and Golden Globe ceremonies, nominated in the best director category for Hacksaw Ridge but foredoomed to lose, there was Gibson, one of the five faces in the five boxes as the nominees got their moment in the spotlight. He may or may not be able to open a movie with his face any longer, but behind the camera, Mel Gibson is already back in the saddle – like it or not – and all is forgiven.