The Border (1982)

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.

Fmovies: Yes it was choppy. Yes a different ending was reshot to a 'happy' ending. If you want to know why, read Tony Richardson's autobiography "Long Distance Runner" which details the infighting, budget cutting, rewriting by others, studio head demands and more. It is a wonder the film ever got made. Originally the studio heads wanted Robert Blake, and it was written for him. No one else in the studio wanted Blake, in fact they loathed him, some were terrified of him, others just disgusted - and this was long before his murder trial. After long negotiations, demands, and flip flopping, Blake passed, and Jack Nicholson, who was a friend of Tony Richardson agreed to do the film, which immediately meant a budget increase and renewed interest. Tony Richardson found Jack to be the ultimate professional - he was on time, knew his lines, took direction without a qualm and delivered. Unlike others in the cast. HarveyNicholson Keitel was a neurotic worrier and demanded take after take. Next day he fretted over the take in the can and wanted to do it again. Valerie Perrine was an thoroughly unpleasant B__tch and seemed to go out of her way to upset everyone.

It took me a long long time to find this film as it is rarely shown on TV and the library does not have it, but I was lucky to find it in the $3 bin at 'Big Lots' store. After watching it on my big screen, i went back to the beginning and watched it again - it's that good. This is the old Jack Nicholson of Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, and The Passenger, before he began hamming it up in blockbuster movies. I found myself thinking he would have done a far better job than John Travolta in Urban Cowboy had he been young enough at the time.

Jack gives a restrained performance as a decent man trapped in an unpleasant situation. He has to return poor immigrants, who have nothing and only seek to survive - even at exploitation wages, back to a life of grinding poverty in a country across a river. the golden dream is tantalizingly close. To make it worse, the border patrol agents are on the take, his wife is a vapid acquisitive airhead who thinks happiness is a duplex with dinky pool, getting her hair and nails done and great sex. He is an honest man who is confronted by the fact that not only is his friend and neighbor not above convenient murder, but so is his supervisor.

The film begins beautifully with a baptism in an old Spanish church where the young Indian woman and her husband are dressed in their best and surrounded by relatives for the occasion. An sudden earthquake kills the husband and destroys the church and town leaving the young mother and baby destitute. They head to the north with her brother to try to cross the border and get into the US. In doing so they are exploited by coyotes and the baby is stolen for sale to an American couple for $25,000. The film manages to depict the dilemma of the border patrol agent, Nicholson, and the desperately poor immigrants fleeing poverty and persecution, as our recent ancestors were able to do legally not too many years ago, as well as the cynical opportunists on the take and turning a blind eye for money.

This film should be released again, because things have not changed.

this film is superb on many levels. while jack nicholson and harvey keitel both have an impressively long list of masterly performances, I believe this film ranks near the tops of their oeuvres with a handful of their other performances in films like "the shining" and "the passenger" for nicholson or "the duellists" and "bad timing" for keitel. all of the supporting cast members deliver excellent performances as well. the scenery is beautiful and is shot well. both the story and the dialogue are superlative. The plot progresses dramatically yet plausibly, at no point is the viewer obliged to suspend her disbelief as nicholson's character is backed into a corner by the circumstances developing around him. The action sequences are both dramatic and believable. go watch this film.

The Border fmovies. This forgotten movie just gets better with age. Jack Nicolson suppresses his usual hamminess, and the resulting tension makes this one of his best performances. Bruce Springsteen must have enjoyed this one too; he's performed the haunting Ry Cooder theme song in concert, and borrowed the story line for one of his "Ghost of Tom Joad" songs.

Although this is not a great film it is a lot better than its reputation. Jack Nicholson is excellent and Harvey Keitel is very good. The beautiful and beguiling Mexican actress, Elpidia Carrillo, handles a limited role with enough artistry to make me wonder why I never heard of her before. Turns out she does have a healthy list of credits both internationally and in the US.

The direction by Tony Richardson, who had his heyday in the sixties with films as varied as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Tom Jones (1963), and The Loved One (1965), all adapted from novels, is at times inspired and artistic, and at other times as ordinary as dishwater. I don't think he was able to make up his mind while directing this film about whether he wanted win an award at Cannes or Venice or to just sell some tickets. As it turns out he did neither as well as he might have. Nonetheless as a snapshot of poor Mexican immigrants (and would-be immigrants) as they clash with the border patrol culture twenty-some years ago The Border is definitely worth a look. Particularly vivid is the depiction of the absurdities and hypocrisies among the coyotes, the "wets," the border patrol rank-and-file, the law and the realities of life along both sides of the thin strip separating the promised land from the third world.

Nicholson plays Charlie Smith, a border patrol cop with a trailer trash wife (Valerie Perrine) who yearns to move up to the luxury of duplex living. In particular she wants to move in next door to her high school girlfriend Savannah (Shannon Wilcox) who is married to the "Cat" (Harvey Keitel). Charlie Smith is a bit of an innocent who was satisfied with his trailer home and his sexy, loving, but not overly sharp, wife Mary. When they do pick up and move to Texas he runs headlong into the corrupt lifestyle of the Cat and the cruel realities of his job which consists of arresting illegal immigrants and sending them back to Mexico. Meanwhile Mary isn't just sitting home twiddling her thumbs. Instead she is out buying water beds and dinette sets, overstuffed chairs and sofas, and other knickknacks that put a strain on the couple's budget which leads Charlie into temptation. But when taking kickbacks turns to murder, Charlie draws the line in the sand (literally as it happens) and he and the Cat have a rather rude falling out.

Meanwhile Charles spots Carrillo as the lovely Maria with babe in arms and a little brother at her side. Predictably the system cruelly exploits her, bringing Charlie to her rescue.

I think the striking contrast between Charlie's air-headed Mary and the desperate and needy Maria needed to be further explored. As it was played Charlie is just a good joe doing a good deed or two when in fact we know he is much more involved than that. I think the movie would have been improved by making him choose between the two women as he had to make the moral choice between going with the Cat's corruption or going against him.

See this for Jack Nicholson, one of the great actors of our time, who brings subtlety and veracity to a role that could have been ordinary, while giving us only a hint of the commanding and irreverent style that he would adopt in later years.

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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.