Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Today we follow the great Ricardo Montalban over from yesterday’s MYSTERY STREET to today’s BORDER INCIDENT.
I totally flipped for yesterday’s AMAD. It’s a perfectly crafted murder mystery populated with awesome characters that would have been over the top if the actors weren’t so good in the roles. Today’s movie is a slight change of pace. It’s not nearly as fun, even if Montalban is just as charming as he was in MYSTERY STREET.
BORDER INCIDENT might not be as fun or as high on the rewatchability factor, but it’s no less of a movie for it, just a different one.
This time out Montalban is once again a cop, but this time a cop from Mexico who joins forces with a US cop as the two countries work to curb illegal immigration during the harvest seasons in Baja California.
At first I was thinking Lou Dobbs must have willed this movie into existence, but then it paints a much more nuanced picture of these farmers than Dobbs would have. The reason for the investigation is to stop these men from essentially paying to murder themselves. They pay a heavy fee to be ferried across the border and then are led into a form of slavery or are picked off as they recross, pockets filled with money from their labors.
And this is pretty damn harsh. The movie opens with one of these scenes, as immigrant workers cross back over and are spotted by the dirty bastards who originally led them over. It’s a perfect spot, apparently. It’s easy to evade the American patrols and there’s a handy quicksand pit where the baddies can dispose of the murdered men after stripping everything of value of their persons.
Montalban works undercover as a Mexican farmer trying to figure out an in that plugs him into the underworld. At the same time the US agent, Bearnes, played by George Murphy, watches his back and shadows Montalban as he delves deeper and deeper into the dark world of human trafficking.
The main tension of the flick is what you’d expect from an undercover cop movie. Montalban and Murphy both have to work to keep their covers. Montalban that of a lowly farmer looking for work and Murphy an escaped Con hiding in Mexico, pockets filled with stolen crossing cards that are worth their weight in gold to the men who run the racket.
Of course, these crossing cards are all recorded and the goal is to get them into the hands of the baddies so they can track them as they distribute.
That’s the plot part, but director Anthony Mann and writer John C. Higgins (ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS) smartly focus on the characters. The plot would barely cover 40 minutes and I found my favorite aspect of the movie were the relationships. There’s a moment where both undercover cops are at the same place at the same time (after both thinking the other was killed) and have to sneak around the guards to share information. Great, tense moment.
Montalban’s core relationship, though, is with a regular immigrant who doesn’t want to cross illegally, but is fed up of having waited 6 weeks trying to get his crossing card, fighting for the limited space amongst a sea of like-men. This is Juan Garcia, played by James Mitchell and he’s basically the innocent of the story. He never would have joined up with the crossing party if he hadn’t told Montalban where to go, so Montalban finds himself incredibly protective of this guy. It’s a very interesting friendship that we see develop, one predicated on deception since Montalban can not blow his cover.
The whole thing culminates on a few different back-stabbings amongst the bad guys and a very well shot nighttime tussle as a truckload of farmers tangle with the heavily armed bad guys who are set up to pick them off in the canyon of death from the beginning. And yes, the quicksand makes a return appearance for a brutal hand to hand fight. Let’s just say that you don’t want to take on Ricardo Montalban in a hand to hand fight, especially when there’s a deep quicksand pit nearby.
There are some surprisingly unpredictable turns this film makes, including the death of one character that I was certain would see the movie to its conclusion… and it’s a horrible death, too. Pretty shocking actually, even by today’s standards.
Final Thoughts: Like I said in the intro, this is a really strong movie, but not nearly as fun as MYSTERY STREET. The photography is great, the direction is fine, the performances are solid and the pacing works for the movie, it’s just not nearly as enjoyable to me. I think the movie might have suffered a little bit following up MYSTERY STREET, but that’s how the dice fall sometimes. I’m still very glad I saw it and feel very comfortable recommending it, especially to any Montalbaniphiles out there.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Tuesday, November 25th: THE TIN STAR (1957)
Wednesday, November 26th: ON THE BEACH (1959)
Thursday, November 27th: TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1949)
Friday, November 28th: GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947)
Saturday, November 29th: PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)
Sunday, November 30th: THE HOT ROCK (1972)
Monday, December 1st: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)
That brings us to the end of our Montalban detour, but hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him in future AMADs.
See you folks tomorrow for Anthony Mann’s western THE TIN STAR starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins and Jason’s mama, Betsy Palmer!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
