La frontera

Cuba Gooding Jr plays Micheal Dixon, a former gangster turned well respected border patrol officer, whose life becomes complicated when people from his past decide to pay him a visit.

The box cover suggest more of an action film, but its actually more of a character story, it unfolds very well and the direction by Kevin Bray(WALKING TALL) is pretty good, but overall the film is pretty average fair, the problems I basically have with this film is the would be gang Gooding Jr's character use to hang with, they never really seemed like a gang, they were never really intimidating, they were actually more annoying and at times it also seemed like they never really had major chemistry, despite the fact that the characters apparently knew each other a long time, otherwise the acting was above par, but when I look at Cuba Gooding Jr, I can say that he is not beyond picking better material, and I would like see him in something better than what he has done lately.

Overall, its pretty average fair and Cuba Gooding Jr as well as the rest of the cast and the director, can certainly do better.

The plot: A cop with a dark past comes face-to-face with the past he's been running away from.

Cuba Gooding, Jr stars as a border patrol officer in New Mexico. He's trying to track down the ruthless "coyote" who left illegal immigrants for dead. In the mean time, he's clashing with racist vigilantes and his superiors, while trying to salvage his family life. This get even more complicated when some L.A. gang members show up, recognize him, and threaten to kill his family, unless he acts as their inside man.

I liked the first part of this movie better, before the gangsters showed up. Once the gangster plot took over, I became considerably less enthused, though I stuck around to see how it would end. The gangsters have a few good scenes, but they never really get the characterization that good villains require. In one memorable scene, they engage in some particularly brutal hazing, which does a good job of making you hate them... but it doesn't really tell you who they are.

The movie plays out somewhat predictably, but the competent stunts and fight choreography make the action sequences pretty watchable. The acting wasn't really a problem for me, but I doubt anyone here is going to win any awards. I generally enjoyed Linewatch, but it's difficult to recommend the movie to anyone but other die-hard Cuba Gooding, Jr fans. His career has been in freefall ever since the mid-2000s, but I actually liked most of his recent movies. They're not great movies, but they're better than what Steven Seagal has been shoveling out.

Cuba Gooding portrays a seemingly respectable cop whose shady past catches up with him, jeopardising his family and career. The concept may not be original, but Gooding's performance and reactions to some wretched and desperate conflicts serve to enhance the voyeuristic pleasure.

The well developed, colourful and generally unsavoury characters surrounding the drug and people trafficking industry add grit to the realism and enhance our understanding of, and sympathy for, Dixon's predicament.

Set against the harsh but stunning background of New Mexico's border country, superbly directed and acted, this is a cut above your average crime flick.

As a resident of a border state with Mexico, I was intrigued with the potential storyline that this film could portray. Unfortunately, it started out by meeting my expectations, but flat-lined about 15 minutes in. Aside from Cuba Gooding Jr.,and the actors who played both his wife and daughter, the performances of everyone else reeked with an odor that indicated that this was a low budget independent film. Instead of chasing "coyotes," the well known and despised human smugglers who incite so much tension and hatred along our borders, this film chased a story line about a bunch of big city gansta's who had the maturity level of 8 year olds. It's worth the $3 rental just to see Cuba Gooding Jr. Don't expect too much though. You just might be disappointed.

For some reason recently, I have become interested in Cuba Gooding Jr.'s present career, seeing how he has become box office poison and is now mostly stuck in doing straight-to-video movies. I was wondering if he had learned his lesson after doing those awful theatrical movies and was now picking better scripts (like Jean Claude Van Damme). After seeing several of his recent movies - including this one - I've concluded that either he hasn't learned his lesson or simply doesn't care.

In fairness, there are a few good things about LINEWATCH. Though this had a low budget ($5 million), it at least looks decent. The cinematography is above average, and the production team chose existing locations that they didn't have to change yet look believable. Also, Gooding fits in this role better than a lot of his other movie roles (theatrical or otherwise.)

But the rest of the movie is pretty much a bust, thanks to its screenplay and its direction. The screenplay clearly needed some more rewrites - its flaws start at the beginning, with the movie seemingly starting at chapter two instead of the beginning. Things do clear up eventually, but then the movie slows down almost to a halt - it takes more than 30 minutes into the movie before the conflict starts for the protagonist. The movie then continues its very slow crawl right up to the climatic scene - there's only about enough story in this movie for a short film, not a feature-length movie.

Curiously, though, despite this slow pace, there are several instances where it seems that footage is missing, and it resulted that I was confused several times for several seconds each time as to what exactly happened. Though even if this seemingly missing footage was restored, it might not have helped the movie - it would have made the movie longer and possibly even more of an ordeal to sit through.