Watch The Border For Free

Waste of time

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Maria (Elpidia Carrillo) leaves her earthquake ravaged homeland with her children. Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) is a world-weary US Bureau of Naturalization and Immmigration agent in L.A. living with his wife Marcy (Valerie Perrine) in a run-down trailer. Then he gets a new job in the border patrol in Texas with a nice house to please his wife. He and his partner Cat (Harvey Keitel) catch a group of illegals including Maria. Cat tries to pull him into his corruption which causes a major rift.I like the dusty ugly border world. Nicholson does a good job but this is not an exciting movie. It doesn't have good cinematic style. This is more at a TV movie level. I think Charlie Smith would be more compelling if he is a naive newbie.

Over the last decades there have been quite a few movies about Mexican to United States Immigration and Border Patrolling. This one, entitled "The Border" is an early 80s era story directed by Tony Richardson. It focuses on a quasi corrupted border agent, played by Jack Nicholson. The direction and story is fairly linear, but not bad. Corruption is broadly painted across both sides of the border, and unfortunately it seems fairly plausible. Supporting cast members do a good job backing up Nicholson including Elpidia Carrilo, Warren Oates, and a young Harvey Keitel. I liked the grittiness of the settings and the way Nicholson's character was unhappy both at home and on the job. The movie had some fairly graphic and violent turns, even for the time. Title song seemed to fit well. Worthy of a watch. About a 7/10

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.

As a teacher of English in Germany you always look for worthy material on the Latino immigration influx . This film is a valuable opener for such a series of lessons. It reveals the impact of the problem. It makes use of outstanding performances: Nicholson and Keitel are as cool as ever. Pellerine is the American woman. Her friends are that, too. The mafia ring consisting of policemen and coyotes is shown realistically. Violence is explicit but not overdone. Landscape and Latino immigrants are depicted in all their shades and lights. The strong American individual wins in the end - again. The good side beats the bad side. The Ry Cooder soundtrack is more than worth listening to. It is authentically reconstructed as always. Teachers: Pick up that video or DVD and use the movie for your lessons on the US Latino problem!