Metacritic-Rezensionen

Jack Nicholson is at his best playing a burned-out border patrol officer in a small Texas town.

Richardson is able to encompass so much in the widescreen frame that he shows how the whole corrupt mess works.

The Border is marvelously detailed. The script, by Deric Washburn, Walon Green, David Freeman, is peppered with lively obscenities and slights that communicate the debauched cynicism of this world.

The film unravels towards the end, devolving into a too-neat shoot-em-up finale that stinks of studio interference, but Nicholson’s performance is a marvel throughout. It’s time it got its due.

The Border is a well-made action-adventure film enhanced by authentic settings and a superlative performance by Jack Nicholson. [08 Feb 1982]

The Border has the air of a project marred by studio compromises -marred but not broken. Warts and all, it has more passion, texture and bite than anything Richardson has done in a long while. [01 Feb 1982, p.72]

Although it has been made with intelligence, is well directed and acted and is in touch with the ways of lower-middle-class American life, it has the sort of predictable outrage and shape of a made-for-television movie. It has suspense but little excitement.

A Tex-Mex stew that looks to have all the right spicy ingredients, but emerges under gringo chef Richardson as not exactly indigestible, merely flavourless.

Despite fine performances from its lead actors, The Border fails to involve the viewer at more than a perfunctory level.

Despite Jack Nicholson's multi-leveled performance, The Border is a surprisingly uninvolving film.