Um Lance De Mestre

classic Western script , full of usual tricks, few sex scenes slices, Casper Van Dien in common role and not bad and not surprising ball of stories. tension is guaranteed and, for large number of viewers , that fact is the essence. a fake show if the expectations are too high. but not too far for to seem be a decent movie. because the recipes is respected, the acting is nice exercise to convince, the waterfall of events , predictable,represents a good choice. bad guys, good guy, victims from/of past. action, delicate flavor from classic films noir, and the impression, after its end, than it could be better but , for a TV film, is enough to be easy entertainment.

I really enjoyed this film, I thought Bryan Brown and Danial Baldwin were great in this film. It would have to be Casper Van dien's only good movie. I thought this movie had a great story with a hole lot of really excellent twists. All and all a very good thriller that I would recommend you see.

9/10

On the Border is only one of films who use pieces from the film noire and western for a not surprise cocktail of love, secrets, revenge and money. far to be a bad movie, it is one with precise target. so, the recipes is the same for low cost productions with similar theme. the good guy who is almost gray, the bad guy, the woman between them. and few scenes of sex, as spice. short, a film with Casper Van Dien and Daniel Baldwin. nothing more. characters as old clothes, dialogues as sketches of confrontations, ambiguous plans and intentions.a nice film who preserves rules of genre and could be a kind of copy of many other classic thrillers.

My tolerance for shlocky direction was overwhelmed by some of the choices in this could-be-really-good time-waster.

When the "romantic" intervals were of a nature to take me out of the story and into "How-and-why-did-the-movie-maker-do-/that/?" mode, you got to figure something is missing in there; restraint and tastefulness, I think.

Brian Brown is a capable, empathetic actor - usually. I think he didn't like the project or the people, and it shows. I don't remember anything the other guy did. Can't even picture his face.

On the other hand, it doesn't have to be any good to be entertaining; some of the vignettes and twists are fun and even ingenious.

I watched this movie ($2.00 purchase at the vid rental place) against the advice of the screenwriter; I understand he was tempted to remove his name from the credits. Matter of pride, I bet.

Having sat through several Casper Van Dien movies in the past, and not being very impressed by them (except for STARSHIP TROOPERS) from both Van Dien's acting style to the quality of the rest of the movies, I put off seeing this movie. The only reason why I watched it was that I bought this movie as part of a double feature DVD (with the other movie being the excellent Dolph Lundgren actioner THE PEACEKEEPER).

There are a few positive things I found in this movie. The movie has good production values, a trademark of Millennium Films/Nu Image film companies. The cinematography is good, and the movie doesn't look really cheap at any moment. (And it was nice to see a movie from these guys that wasn't shot in Bulgaria.) There is some nice gratuitous nudity, and the story has multiple plot threads that get you curious as to how they will all be resolved at the end.

But I didn't think that the movie worked overall for several reasons. There is a lack of sympathetic characters, for one thing - you'll wish they will all end up dead. The script also moves very slowly after a while - there should have been more action or big plot turns throughout the narrative. You have to wait for the last twenty minutes before things start to seriously move and things start resolving themselves.

Still, it could have been worse. I've seen worse Van Dien movies (and worse Van Dien performances.) If you are pressed to watch a Van Dien movie that's not STARSHIP TROOPERS, this is probably the one to watch.