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Such a frustrating disappointment

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a variation and predecessor of "They Drive By Night", and it periodically airs on Turner Classic Movies and seems to be in good condition. That's important because this film is on DVD-R via the Warner Archive and has had absolutely no restoration done to it - whatever happened to be in the Warner vault is what you get. I just thought I'd mention that in case you decide to purchase it - there is no other way to own it.This film is not an introduction to Bette Davis. She had first worked at Universal and then switched over to Warner Brothers in 1931 where she starred opposite George Arliss in "The Man Who Played God". Universal thought she didn't have any potential. Bette Davis is still playing a largely supporting role here. Paul Muni is the actual star as a Latino man with big dreams (Johnny Ramirez) as he finally graduates from night school with a law degree. However, his first case finds him totally unprepared to the point of malpractice. Next he loses his temper and punches the opposing attorney in the nose. The judge recommends that he be disbarred, and our hero's short law career is over. A disheartened Johnny wanders down to a border town where he becomes friends with Charlie Roark (Eugene Palette), and soon becomes partners with him in a casino there. Bette Davis plays Roark's wife who secretly loves Johnny. She thinks the only thing coming between her and Johnny is her marriage, so she leaves her drunken husband in the garage one night with the car running, making his death look like an accident to the authorities. However, Johnny really loves a society girl, and this drives Roark's widow to even more desperate measures.Muni's last lines in the film and the apparent moral to the story will have modern audiences probably saying "What the...", but you have to remember this was made in 1935 and appreciate it for the performances.

This movie has most everything bad the other reviews claim, and that's why I like it. It's almost burlesque. Yes, Muni overacts (and gets the accent wrong, which is odd, since Muni was known for his scrupulous preparation). Even as the taciturn Juarez, Muni overacts his underacting. It may be his wonderful voice, but there's something about his persona that makes the emoting appealing. That said, I think Edward G. Robinson would have been better in the part. As for Bette Davis, for the whole movie, her character seems to be on or coming down from cocaine. There's a solo scene where she looks like someone who's just done a line, and you watch as the drug begins to work on her. Mad scenes were a Davis specialty and she gives one to Muni like she did to Leslie Howard in Of Human Bondage, except here she's like someone screaming at her pusher who's cut her off. Of course, in the movie, the drug is lust.Anyway, I don't think the subject here is race so much as class. The moral of the story is the old one, that a step up is not necessarily a step for the better. Rich people can be stinkers, so why would you want to buy into them? Muni made another movie of this "city mouse, country mouse" fable, The Good Earth. Robinson made many, but unlike Robinson's characters, Muni's (except for Scarface) were able to escape in one piece.

Although Paul Muni does go over the top a bit in Bordertown, the film remains a savage indictment of racism, concentrating as it does on the struggles of one man in a racial/ethnic minority to find a place in this society.In a biography of Paul Muni I read that he deliberately hired a Mexican driver who stayed with him for several weeks so he could copy his mannerisms and get down the proper speech pattern. He didn't do half bad as Johnny Ramirez, the disbarred attorney who turns to the dark side.The story has Muni bright and eager to start making a living as a lawyer and please his mom Soledad Jimenez who sacrificed a lot so her kid could study law. But in his first appearance in court he loses his temper and manages to get himself disbarred. Had this been a white attorney, I assure you he might have gotten a slap on the wrist and a censure, but not a disbarment. Broken in spirit, Muni ends up working for Eugene Palette at a road house as a bouncer.He also catches the eye of Palette's wife played by Bette Davis. But Muni has eyes for Margaret Lindsay, a society girl who likes to go slumming. In the end both women disillusion and betray him.Bordertown is one of the darkest films of the Thirties, the future is by no means clear for Muni. Though he does overact a bit, you will not forget the smoldering anger that he brings to the part of Johnny Ramirez. This was the second of two films in which Paul Muni played a person of Mexican background. The other was Juarez and there is 180 degree difference between the angry Ramirez and the stoic Juarez. You can hardly believe it's the same actor, but Muni had one incredible range as a player.This is a film that could probably stand a remake. I could see someone like Benjamin Bratt or Lou Diamond Phillips in an updated version as Johnny Ramirez, possibly Edward James Olmos. It was in fact made over in part by Warner Brothers in They Drive By Night. But the Mexican heritage and a great deal more was not included in that film.Until then I recommend Bordertown highly

Two films that Bette Davis and Paul Muni did together evolved around Spanish heritage-this one and 1939's "Juarez."When I saw this film, I began to think of "They Drive By Night," which came several years later and had Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogard in similar roles where a spurned Lupino, who had killed her husband in the same way that Davis did in the Eugene Palette character, goes berserk when Bogart ignores her.Lupino's outburst in the court that the doors made her do it was much more effective than Davis's insanity scene.Nonetheless, we have an excellent film here with the element of class identity and racism added to the mix.Muni as Johnny Ramirez is perfect. He desires the American dream, but even a law degree can't save him from a poor performance in court, a terrible temper which will lead to his expulsion from practicing the law. Ramirez finds success another way, by opening a nightclub after he formed a partnership with Palette and met Palette's bored, lust filled Davis.In a supporting performance, Margaret Lindsay is effective as the high class society spoiled woman who turned the tables on attorney Ramirez in court, only to meet him some time later, when he is a success, but only to reject him again.Remember Rita Moreno's statement in "West Side Story?" Stick to your own kind, stay with your own kind. Ramirez repeats this at the end of the film. 1935 or 1961, this was the prevailing time of racism.