As the Criterion commentator says, this is kind of an anti-Noir.
It follows a criminal low-life intent on revenge of a sort on one of his kind. To get what he wants, he resorts to all manner of masculine clichés of hardness as he tracks his prey to a Mexican border town. But rather than finding success, or destruction, (two opposing forms of affirmation) through this brutishness, the tough is instead emasculated, made helpless and irrelevant to the narrative that supposedly revolves around him.
The traditional noir anti-hero, rather like the classical Tragic Hero, is both empowered and doomed by his capacity for violence. Here, the anti-hero is saved by his inability to determine his own fate. Instead, an alien and indifferent culture chooses to save him, simply as an act of good will, or, as it amounts to the same thing, for the cheap thrill of doing so.
The Noir Anti-Hero, like the Tragic Hero, becomes the pinnacle of the (doomed) world but cannot escape the horrible fate that world has in store for its subject. This movie's protagonist escapes this fate by becoming irrelevant to the space of its narrative world.
It follows a criminal low-life intent on revenge of a sort on one of his kind. To get what he wants, he resorts to all manner of masculine clichés of hardness as he tracks his prey to a Mexican border town. But rather than finding success, or destruction, (two opposing forms of affirmation) through this brutishness, the tough is instead emasculated, made helpless and irrelevant to the narrative that supposedly revolves around him.
The traditional noir anti-hero, rather like the classical Tragic Hero, is both empowered and doomed by his capacity for violence. Here, the anti-hero is saved by his inability to determine his own fate. Instead, an alien and indifferent culture chooses to save him, simply as an act of good will, or, as it amounts to the same thing, for the cheap thrill of doing so.
The Noir Anti-Hero, like the Tragic Hero, becomes the pinnacle of the (doomed) world but cannot escape the horrible fate that world has in store for its subject. This movie's protagonist escapes this fate by becoming irrelevant to the space of its narrative world.