I love Charles Bronson, and I really wanted to love "Borderline," but it's about as exciting as a trip to the grocery store.
It's the story of a criminal syndicate that smuggles Mexicans into the US like they were cattle, abusing and under-paying them as illegal laborers. It seems that some shady companies will pay big bucks for employees they can treat like slaves, and as a Border Patrol Officer it's Bronson's job to stop the flow of immigrants at the source.
Except no one seems to care. None of the characters have any personality, there are no surprises and not really any action, either. The actors move from scene to scene because the script tells them to... no one has any passion or clear motivation. The movie is filmed without any sense of the fantastic... the Director seems to believe that it's all really happening, but the problem is he doesn't find any of it exciting in the least.
Charles Bronson is almost invisible as the lead... he's looks like he could barely keep from falling asleep. Wilford Brimley, Bruno Kirby, and Ed Harris show up in supporting roles, but they too are in mellow comas, low-energy and reciting their lines quietly... The cinematography is awful, and call me old-fashioned by I much prefer a beautiful girl to look at in a film than dozens and dozens of mustachioed Mexicans. There are no women in the film.
It's a good thing I wrote this review immediately after seeing the movie, because I can already feel it slipping from my memory like a daydream on a summer afternoon. There's nothing to see here, even for Bronson die-hards. This isn't a movie... it's just some stuff that happened.
GRADE: C-
It's the story of a criminal syndicate that smuggles Mexicans into the US like they were cattle, abusing and under-paying them as illegal laborers. It seems that some shady companies will pay big bucks for employees they can treat like slaves, and as a Border Patrol Officer it's Bronson's job to stop the flow of immigrants at the source.
Except no one seems to care. None of the characters have any personality, there are no surprises and not really any action, either. The actors move from scene to scene because the script tells them to... no one has any passion or clear motivation. The movie is filmed without any sense of the fantastic... the Director seems to believe that it's all really happening, but the problem is he doesn't find any of it exciting in the least.
Charles Bronson is almost invisible as the lead... he's looks like he could barely keep from falling asleep. Wilford Brimley, Bruno Kirby, and Ed Harris show up in supporting roles, but they too are in mellow comas, low-energy and reciting their lines quietly... The cinematography is awful, and call me old-fashioned by I much prefer a beautiful girl to look at in a film than dozens and dozens of mustachioed Mexicans. There are no women in the film.
It's a good thing I wrote this review immediately after seeing the movie, because I can already feel it slipping from my memory like a daydream on a summer afternoon. There's nothing to see here, even for Bronson die-hards. This isn't a movie... it's just some stuff that happened.
GRADE: C-