Police frontière

I remember seeing this movie at a seedy downtown LA theater, the second film of a double bill that I almost walked out on before it began. I was glad I stayed. I don't remember what the feature film was, but I have never forgotten this movie.

Jack Nicholson plays a on-the-take border patrol cop trying to go straight, but surrounded by corruption on both sides of the fence. He finally has to choose between fitting in by being a dirt bag, and being true to himself and cutting his ties with his buddies and his family.

The border is not only a fence between two countries, it's a moral line between decency and indecency, between moral compromise and being a truly humane and compassionate person regardless of the consequences.

The acting is superb, and the the plot could not be more timely. So give this box office bomb a go soon! It's a real diamond in the rough.

There are two things about this movie that make it a must-watch: Jack Nicholson in one of his best performances, and the issue of immigration.

Nicholson is a border guard who tries to resist the money available but his crazy wife (Valerie Perrine) just spends, spends, and spends like he was a Rockefeller. He finally joins with his neighbor and partner (Harvey Keitel) and runs some Mexicans across the border.

Charlie (Nicholson) still has some morals and that causes problems for his partner. He is also taken with Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), and that causes problems for their Mexican contact, so he sets him up to control him.

However, he can't control Charlie, and now even the boss (Warren Oates) is mad at him.

Tony Richardson's film has a lot of elements of Sam Peckinpah. Exciting to the end.

Music by the great Ry Cooder.

Jack Nicholson gives a wonderfully controlled performance in this film. His restraint and control is contrasted to Harvey Keitel's fallen character and to his out-of-control, childish wife (Valerie Perrine). He works in dishonest circumstances in which he enforces the law selectively in a tacit arrangement with crooked businessmen. In so doing he is a part of the exploitation of Mexican workers. When he transfers from L.A. to Texas, his conscience is awakened by his dishonest co-worker and a beautiful, victimized Latina (Elpidia Carillo) and her child.

There is plenty of action and the story moves in response to the characters.

Freddy Fender and Ry Cooder provide memorable and haunting music that just makes the whole film so much more powerful.

Jack Nicholson does solid work in the role of Charlie Smith, a border patrol officer who moves from California to Texas. Saddled with a well meaning but materialistic wife, Marcy (Valerie Perrine), he realizes that his pocketbook can't keep up with her dreams, so he yields to corruption. This is also encouraged by his new neighbor / partner "Cat" (Harvey Keitel). Soon Charlie is taking pity on young mother Maria (Elpidia Carrillo). When her baby is stolen for the purpose of being sold on the black market, he gets involved in her plight.

All of the actors here deliver rather under rated performances. With Nicholson, there's no theatricality, no eccentricity, just a good, straightforward, impassioned portrayal. Perrine plays the wife in such a way that you can't really hate her. Keitel is great as always as the shady partner, as is the sadly short lived Warren Oates, near the end of his life and career, as Charlies' new boss. Carrillo is lovely and extremely engaging, and one might wish that she'd had more opportunities in American film over the years. (Most people likely know her as the sole female character in "Predator".) There's a fair bunch of recognizable actors in supporting and bit parts: Shannon Wilcox, Jeff Morris, Dirk Blocker, Lonny Chapman, William Russ, Gary Grubbs, etc.

The story, written by Deric Washburn, Walon Green, and David Freeman, is not a great one, but it is entertaining and involving enough to keep ones' attention. Vivid on location shooting is one asset, the sad depiction of the reality of dirt poor Mexicans is another. You can understand why some of these people want to see if their fortunes in the U.S. will be any better. It also benefits from having a main character who's not a squeaky clean, Dudley Do Right type, but is still a basically decent person who will NOT cross certain lines. Viewers will love the expansive widescreen photography and the lovely score by Ry Cooder.

At a time when the issues of border policing and illegal aliens are very much on peoples' minds, this film does remain relevant.

Seven out of 10.

When one considers the extraordinary acting career of Jack Nicholson, the performances that immediately spring to mind are the likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining and even Tim Burton's Batman. They were roles seemingly tailor-made for Nicholson's manic arched eyebrows and devilish grin, but he was capable of so much more when, ironically, doing far less. Arguably, he has never been better than as Charlie Smith, the middle-aged and weary border agent working within a corrupt organisation in El Paso. When we first meet him, he is discussing with the owner of a factory which of his illegal immigrant employees to arrest so he can meet his quota of deportations. He reads the Mexican youths their rights like reading from a shopping list, but they'll be back in a few days. Charlie's job is ineffective and he knows it, and it takes a special actor to pull off indifference and boredom without appearing disinterested.

Every night he returns to his nondescript trailer to eat a TV dinner cooked by his stay-at-home wife Marcy (Valerie Perrine). It is Marcy who convinces Charlie to quit his job as an immigration enforcement officer and move to El Paso, where property is cheaper and a job as a border agent awaits him. To please the wife he has fallen out of love with but nevertheless tolerates, Charlie agrees, and falls in with fellow border agent Cat (Harvey Keitel). Along with his supervisor Red (Warren Oates), Cat runs a human trafficking operation across the border, and wants Charlie to join the payroll. Meanwhile, young Mexican mother Maria (Elpidia Carrillo) attempts to flee into the U.S. with her baby and younger brother after an earthquake decimates her town. When she frequently comes up against the border patrols, Charlie start to sympathise with her situation, as well as growing increasingly weary of his wife's wild spending and his colleagues' abuse of power.

The Border didn't do particularly well on its release and its memory has somewhat faded since, but director Tony Richardson's film packs enough of a punch to warrant a reevaluation. It perhaps arrived too late in a decade when cinema had moved away from the character-driven 70s and more towards visual decadence. Yet The Border could also be released today, and its subject matter would be just as relevant, if not more so. It highlights the problems on both sides, with corruption rife and those caught in the middle treated like dogs, and what little progress has been made in the decades since. Recent films like Sin Nombre and Cartel Land have explored and highlighted the same issues, and the result is always violence upon violence. Richardson, who is better known for his exceptional British works Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runnier and Tom Jones (amongst others), directs with little flair but trusts the story to pack enough power on its own. Although it descends into a generic, action-packed climax (which was forced in after test audiences reacted badly to the original ending), The Border deserves another shot, and features a Jack Nicholson at the very top of his game.