Hell on the Border

Seemed more like a made for TV western. Obviously not a high grade production. It is a story of Bass Reeves and the outlaws are real. Glad I watched, but probably not again.

This movie had the potential to be amazing. I mean it was acted well but with WAY too many music scenes over riding and long drawn out moments of boredom.

Somebody should take this idea up again and make it great!! This was just too bland.

What a disappointed this movie was! Westerns are not the easiest movies to make, most of the time it's just macho behavior against other machos. In this movie it's basically the same but in contrast with good westerns (where they have good actors that can play mean vilains, like Eastwood, Van Cleef and others) you now get a movie full of machos but played by bad actors and a very lousy directing. What the hell was Ron Perlman thinking to play in this movie? Did he read the script? Was he desperate for a role? It's certainly one of the worst if not the worst movie he ever played in. The story of Bass Reeves sounded like an interesting story to make a movie about, but this is just an insult to his story. Wes Miller did a messed up job writing this story and he did an even worse job directing it. People getting gut and leg shots look like they could run a marathon two minutes later, it's just beyond ridiculous. The drawing of the guns in the usual face offs you get in westerns are so slow it's just laughable and painful to watch. There is absolutely nothing good about this western, probably one of the worst westerns I ever watched, certainly in my top three of stinkers in this genre. And then you got the music which absolutely didn't fit in this movie, very irritating. In fact the whole movie irritated me, couldn't wait for the end to come.

Despite the obvious b-grade quality, Ron Perlman, Frank Grillo and the genre of western was enough for me to give it a try - I do occasionally enjoy the little movies with good ol' actors just having a fun time. Well, "Hell on the Border" is probably the lousiest western I've seen so far, but, thankfully, not entirely without a heart.

In the most aspects of filmmaking, "Hell on the Border" is weak and painfully cliché. The plot, based on the true story of Bass Reeves, the first black U.S. marshall, is stitched together from arcs that we've seen a hundred times before & in a hundred better movies. I mean, there's literally not one hint of originality in "Hell on the Border". Same applies to the characters, though the duo of David Gyasi and Ron Perlman was at least mildly entertaining to watch. Frank Grillo, the villain, did a fine job. In portraying a mostly boring character. A pacing that drags constantly & a high predictability factor - these are a few additional "qualities" this movie possesses. Most frustratingly, "Hell on the Border" is also a mess regarding all technical and aesthetical means - the cinematography is boring, even sketchy, the lighting & color grading's effortless and way too amateur, the whole movie has a drab, grey-ish, even ugly look. Some random shots are extra grainy. To make it all worse, the original score was massively overused & it was as cheap as everything else in this flick. Most of the action sequences were wack and unrealistic. For a 2019 movie with such actors, even for the usual b-movie, "Hell on the Border" is technically embarrassing.

When I said it has a heart, I meant only the aforementioned acting duo of David Gyasi and Ron Perlman, plus the extremely conventional story line - yes, conventional, not entirely useless. Nevertheless, I recommend "Hell on the Water" to absolutely no one, except if you're sold on the same things I was. You have been warned though. My rating: 3/10.

Honestly should have known something was up when they started the movie with this long-quoted history on lack of Black Cowboy stories. This is true, and I was pumped up to see a black cowboy in action. Too bad there was no action in the movie. It was a lot of watching the black cowboy stand around with this look of pure pride of who he is, which is great but not for an entire two hours. It's a movie, I needed to see more. It also stinks that both Ron Perlman and Frank Grillo was in the movie, and they did mostly nothing as well.

See the movie is a about a black cowboy so I'm expecting a western, and sense I've seen plenty of westerns I can tell this was a lackluster one, simply as that.

Too bad :(