The Border (1982)
Directed by: Tony
Richardson.
Written by: Deric
Washburn & Walon Green & David Freeman.
Starring: Jack Nicholson (Charlie
Smith), Harvey Keitel (Cat), Valerie Perrine (Marcy), Warren Oates (Red), Elpidia
Carrillo (Maria), Shannon Wilcox (Savannah), Manuel Viescas (Juan), Jeff Morris
(J.J.), Mike Gomez (Manuel), Dirk Blocker (Beef), Lonny Chapman (Andy).
I imagine
a film like The Border coming out in 2020 would likely please no one. It’s a
film about a border guard played by Jack Nicholson who is used to working in
California, but moves down to El Paso at the insistence of his materialistic
wife, and finds the rules are different down there. Coyotes are moving over
dozens people at a time, and are always on the move. The border guards can hardly keep up – and so
most of them don’t try. They’ll arrest who they can – but there is money to be
made down there simply by looking the other way, or helping out some of those
coyotes. After all, the logic goes, Texas has been running on the labor of
“wets” for decades – and without them, they whole system would shut down.
Nicholson’s Charlie is a straight arrow – at least at first, but he bends ever
so slightly as the film moves along, until he can bend no more. He is basically
won over by an innocent young Mexican woman who is nice to him at the border –
and who has had baby kidnapped by one of those coyotes.
Nicholson
is very good as Charlie – he is the best thing about the movie. By this point,
Nicholson was into middle-age, and had left the youthful rebellion of much of
his 1970s projects behind. Here, he plays a man who wants a simple life – he
doesn’t much like being a border agent, and talks to his wife about maybe going
back to the parks service – he liked feeding those ducks. But Marcy (Valerie
Perrine) wants the good life – she talks him into moving from their trailer in
California, into a Duplex in El Paso – and opens up a charge account at the
mall to buy furniture – not to mention that new pool. Their neighbors are
Marcy’s old friend Savannah (Shannon Wilcox) and her husband Cat (Harvey
Keitel) – a fellow border agent, who tries to recruit Charlie – showing him the
ways things are done around here (Keitel seems to be trying a Texas accent in
the early scenes – and then at some point just gave up). Charlie knows fairly
quickly that he won’t have much support when his boss, Red (Warren Oates)
basically suggests that he agrees with Cat on those ways.
Nicholson
is at his best here when he is able to communicate just how tired Charlie is –
how run down, and beat up. He has played by the rules all his life, and it
hasn’t gotten him anywhere, but he seems comfortable with that – or would be if
Marcy didn’t keep picking at him for more, more, more. Perrine is very good as
well – it’s a little bit of a one note performance as someone stuck in 1980s
materialism, which director Tony Richardson can lay on a little thick at times
(commercials play in the background pretty much every time Charlie and Marcy
are at home – even when they have sex) – but she plays it very well regardless.
To
describe the film’s portrait of Mexico as of its time would be to give the film
a little much credit. It’s clear the filmmakers were trying to complicate the
narrative of it being a lawless place, by showing some good aspects of it as
well, but it’s comes across as condescending. There’s really only three Mexican
characters of note here – the innocent Maria played by Elpidia Carrillo, who
was 21 at the time, but looks to be about 15, who you meant to feel sympathy
for (and do), her brother Juan (Manuel Viescas), the doomed innocent, and
Manuel (Mike Gomez), the sleazy coyote, with the slicked back hair, and no
morals to speak of. They are all one note – although Carrillo (who would
essentially play a very similar role in Oliver Stone’s Salvador a few years
later) does have one great moment – a heartbreaking one when she starts to
strip when Nicholson offers her help, assuming that is what she’ll have to do
to get it. The film bends over backwards to make you feel sympathy for these
characters – but what it fails to do is make them complicated characters – like
Charlie is. This is still very much a white man’s film about Mexico.
The end
of the movie devolves into chases sequences and a shoot-out – a simplistic and
formulaic way to end the film, that really does feel like it was studio
mandated. As a portrait of Mexico, or the problems at the border, the film is
too one note. A film like this today would be criticized on one side as being
too simplistic a portrayal of Mexico and migrants, and on the other for
painting the border patrol as basically lawless and unfeeling – and both sides
would have a point. Still, while the film may not quite work on that level, at
its best, it is a good character study, with a great central performance by
Nicholson playing a weary man who just wants to be comfortable, who tries to do
the wrong thing, and finds he cannot live with himself if he does.
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