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Nicholson's The Border

Just another really class act from Jack Nicholson. Truly a major film about our complex Mexican border -- I am very happy with my VHS from a fine seller! Rates triple A++++.

Nicholson and Keitel in "The Border"

A contemporary Western with all the sinister possibilities that surround issues a Border Patrol agent could face even today, 1982's "The Border" (1982) is a crime drama that still holds strength through the years. Jack Nicholson has just transferred to El Paso, Texas after getting on with the United States Border Patrol. Harvey Keitel is ever bit as important in his role as he plays a current member of the Patrol, where drug trafficking and the endless capture and release of people entering the country illegally can take a toll on a man over time.


Nicholson's portrayal is top notch, as the viewer experiences his life up close and personal as he quickly realizes his ethics and integrity within his job are being threatened from within the very organization he belongs to. Corruption and Betrayal abound as a heart wrenching theme emerges that carries a carload of compassion for Charlie (Nicholson) when he soon gets caught up in one of the worst crimes possible; Human Trafficking.

Charlie's journey turns from frustration to near madness as his wife starts racking up bills with new furniture and toys, trying to create an oasis within their desert predicament that does little to mask the pain.

With an older film like this, one might think the problems and scenarios are more fictitious than factual, but with the same issues that still face Border Patrol Agents today, the plot and overall storyline stays fresh. Charlie becomes caught up in a world of crime where the actual borderline seems to do little to separate the innocent and the guilty. Cat (Keitel) is a great counter punch as a friend, antagonist and symbolic reference for the corruption and crime that does nothing but add to the dilemmas faced by Charlie. Chases in the desert, lies, a final confrontation and going against the grain to help a young woman named Maria all lead to a powerful ending. This is a film that has seemed to be forgotten amidst all of the other great performances Nicholson and Keitel have given over the years, but is still a touching, riveting film that holds value with quality acting and an excellent script.

The Border is still very relevant. Story good, performance, too. Is too long

relevant and real. I grew up in this part of America. I am almost 70 and can attest to the raw accuracy of the

film. Acting good. could have benefited from closer editing and been 20 minutes shorter

Where's the sound track?

Wonderful movie, with fine performances by a host of actors. What I'd like to know is why the sound track has never been released on CD? Seems like the LP was available for about 15 minutes, and I was lucky enough to get one of those, but hey, there is some real nice music all over this movie, and it needs to be on CD!

the border DVD

You almost cannot go wrong with Jack Nicholson or Harvey Keitel, the scenario is interesting, and Valerie Perrine proves once more why she never made the big time in Hollywood

Not a great movie

I thought this was a pretty good movie but not a great one. I didn't find it memorable or anything that really got my juices flowing. Of course anytime you have Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel on the screen together it is something worth watching. Go into it with the expectation of just watching two really good and cool actors doing their thing earlier in their career.


Not a great movie but worth a look.

A courageous picture, a good dose of action balanced with human vulnerability

THE BORDER (1982), with Harvey Keitel and Jack Nicholson taking on
the roles of US Border Patrol officers near Mexico, were optimal
choices for their individualism, charisma and proven crowd-drawing
capabilities to the theatres.

The theme touched upon - the trafficking of humans like cattle
across the border, and the poor conditions of aliens - is obviously
more than current even 25 years later.

Its strength is the immense realism and the battle between embracing
one's true character, doing what one naturally feels is the right
thing to do, (often in line with the law) weighed against the
struggle to please the boss, co-exist with existing "in loco"
corruption, and payoffs occurring in the patrol officer workforce. It
refers to wetbacks, pepper bellies, a 3 mile fence, coyotes, gourd
heads, etc.

Here, Nicholson is told to turn a blind eye to alien cargos delivered
to needy fruit and vegetable crop producers in the USA, and to
industrial base owners who rely on below minimum wage workers to
maximize profits. He is also told to accept as business taking out
independent and rival gang drug traffickers. There's holding a baby
for randsom in the form of an annuity. He has trouble in dealing with
all this, from his inexperience in life, prior training, and from
different behaviors required in normal police environments.

Keeping the lid on the jar of corruption is a tough job, parallel to
the actual work officers do, as Nicholson, Keitel struggle to keep
the money flows going between all interested parties, especially
themselves, and to their wives, who are phenomenal spenders ( such as
underground pool, waterbed, new home, etc.) who pile on them a
financial pressure without giving it any second thoughts. This is
critique on consumerism, of the affluence of American society. The
wife says " Don't worry about paying it back! I opened a charge card
account at the merchant" suggesting credit cards debt is not a true
debt.

Interestingly, Keitel quickly carries out a strategy to keep
Nicholson under his thumb, by framing him for manslaughter,
potentially charged unless the latter cooperates, and goes along with
total obedience to what the former describes as "real big money on
the table, how each must take care of their own, that something's
good is going on, because things are different down here, and the
need to sit on the right horse from the start."

The downside is the perpetuation of the stereotype of the illiterate
peasant Mexican, either on the take if a man, or a prostitute if a
woman, with others looking to live a new life in the USA. The cheesy
1970's era pickup trucks and clunkers are perhaps the only aspect
that makes the picture truely dated.

The best cinematography was obviously done in the outdoors,
especially action scenes filmed with a pleasing clarity, while the
indoor ones are suprisingly average, boorish. The true widescreen
aspect, however, is welcomed in either case.

The music oftentimes is wholly inappropriate, with Ry Cooder, playing
his acoustic traditional guitar, and other times, slide guitar during
action, or life-and-death sequences for example, suggesting a perhaps
one-trick-pony type of audio he's able to come up with, identical to
his Paris, TX colaboration.

Overall, BORDER is a courageous picture, interesting, with a good
dose of action and excitement, balanced out equally with mellow,
vulnerable human behavior that tells the tale of a struggle between
character and doing what's right against profit-minded, one-track
minded opportunists.

The broken promised land

DVD has become the equivalent of the old late night double-bill circuit, the last chance to catch old movies on the verge of being completely forgotten like The Border. There were great expectations for this back in 1982 - a script co-written by The Wild Bunch's Walon Green, Jack Nicholson in the days when he could still act without semaphore and a great supporting cast (Harvey Keitel, Warren Oates, Valerie Perrine), Tony Richardson directing (although he was pretty much a spent force by then) - but now it doesn't even turn up on TV. The material certainly offers a rich seam of possibilities for comment on the 80s American Dreams 80s of capitalism and conspicuous consumption, with Nicholson's border patrolman turning a blind eye to the odd drug deal or bit of people trafficking to finance his wife's relentless materialism, until he rediscovers his conscience when he finds out his partners are also in the baby selling business. Unfortunately, he never really gets his hands dirty, barely even turning a blind eye before his decency rises to the surface. The film feels always watered down as if too many rewrites and too many committees have left it neutered and, sadly, the recent DVD release is a missed opportunity to restore the original, nihilistic ending where Nicholson goes over the edge and firebombs the border patrol station that was cut after preview audiences found it too downbeat but which still featured prominently in the film's trailers.


While that probably wasn't too convincing considering how low-key Nicholson's crisis of conscience is in the film, it had to be better than the crude reshot climax where the film abandons logic and even basic rules of continuity: at one point he's holding characters at gunpoint, then he's somewhere else and they're free trying to kill him, one character goes from injured at his house to hopping around like a gazelle on the banks of the Rio Grande while Valerie Perrine's character gets dumber on an exponential level. The villains of the piece are disposed of with absurd ease (and one impressive car stunt) in time for a clumsily edited happy ending and you start wondering if you somehow found yourself watching another film entirely. What makes it all the more clumsy is that the rest of the film is so flat and underwhelming that the sudden lurch into melodrama is all the more jarring. Unfortunately Ry Cooder's beautiful title song, Across the Borderline, says it all much more economically. But if you want to know the film's real crime, it's completely wasting the great Warren Oates in a nothing bit part. When even he can't make an impression, you know something's really wrong. All in all, all too easy to remember why I found this so forgettable.


The DVD has no extras - not even a trailer - but has an acceptable 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, although many night scenes lack detail.

The Border

As a former Border Patrol Agent and now Police Officer I found the movie to be quite in line with what was happening on our border during that time period and even today. The Border accuratly represents the law lessness that occured and is occuring along our borders. Great movie!Great job Jack!

On the border

Fairly average drama about the border patrol along the Rio Grande on the take while allowing illegal aliens across the border. One of them, Jack Nicholson, tries to do the right thing. Nicholson, who has been pressured by his prissy wife (Valerie Perrine) to get in on the takes, is finally disgusted by the whole thing and begins to help a young mother and her kids get into the US. It's all about corruption and the corruptible and the fine line between good and evil, but the movie has little depth as it probes these issues and is full of cliches. Not one of Nicholson's or Richardson's best efforts.

Harsh Realities of a Dream

Dreams of the golden promised land and terrible conditions in their home country incite a Mexican woman to bundle her infant and follow the lead of her young teenage brother North across the border. Jack Nicholson plays Charlie Smith, a man trying to please his airheaded wife by leaving California to become part of the Texas border guard. The wife is played beautifully by Valerie Perrine, with other movie characters played quite well by Warren Oates and Harvey Keitel. Among the grit and sand of his new job Charlie encounters the young family and becomes involved in their journey as the promised land dream fades into harsh reality. This is a poignant movie, directed by Tony Richardson. It is scored well and has an ending that somehow makes the struggle seem less harsh and lifts the spirit.

Great.

Nicholson works magic in this role. The way the movie shows how Americans pursue the American dream (Nicholson's wife spending more and more until it drives him crazy, to fulfill her materialistic fantasies) and those of trying to get across the border: that is their American dream. Along with the corruptibility of men who have no power to execute the duties of their job, it is well worth a look.


A subtle and intense film.

Riddled with politically correct cliches

Nicholson, here in his prime, delivers a good performance, but I think it far from his best. The rest of the cast includes some fine actors, but they are forced to behave as caricatures in the director's politically correct fantasy.


In what is basically a propaganda film, the good guys are angelic, while the bad guys can't even muster proper dental hygiene. The film has all the verisimilitude of an old episode of The Big Valley. Nicholson's is the only character with any semblance of complexity, and not much at that. There isn't another realistic character in the lot. After watching this polemic, who would ever know that millions of illegals -- more than a few of them my friends -- have come to the United States because opportunity is greater and life better? The idea that any illegal with all his wits was working, as the obligatory evil capitalist character says, for $6 a week, is a product of the Hollywood penchant for preposterous nonsense. I can't think of a single illegal among the many I've known who hasn't created a more secure and satisyfing life "across the borderline." You can bet that the scriptwriters, the director, and producer of The Border spent a lot of their time with illegals, perhaps most especially their maids.

Most offensively, the film is an insult to the illegals. The people who made this film had to have believed that illegal immigrants were imbeciles who didn't bother to learn anything about conditions in the U.S. before coming to the country, and then returning if they were caught and deported. None of this is to minimize the corruption and brutality of U.S. government border enforcement. A good film could have been made about that.

almost perfect

The border is a great film,drama,action,and a feeling that jack is gonna snap and the fit will hit the shan before the end.the only problem is it ends way to quick,leaving a situation with his wife unresolved.but I guess a film that leaves you wanting more is a good thing?

Tony and Jack

When i saw this film on it's first release back in 1982, i walked out of the theatre moved to tears. As i've grown older, i realize how much i've grown into the politics of this film. We're all corruptable, we're all tempted, but we all make choices and decide which line we will not cross. Further, as in Traffic, there are wars we cannot win. So choose small battles and win those. Do something you can feel good about. This is atypical Jack Nicholson (he even hides his famous arched eyebroes under mirror shades for much of the film)and i was thrilled to read elsewhere that he considers this perhaps his best film. (I've thought of trying to tell him this somehow just as i've wanted to tell Duton Hoffman about his Straw Dogs performance). He's amazing in a performace that matches the pain and sublte beauty of the film. He has so many quotable lines ("I sure miss feeding those ducks." "I married a #*&% bananna.")) Tony Richardson, the man who brought us Tom Jones, couldnt be more out of his element yet there's no one else who could have pulled the emotion from this riveting story. Buy, rent, steal today. Great freeze at the end with Ry Cooder playing over.

Underrated and overlooked, but definitely worthwhile

Although this is not a great film it is a lot better than its reputation. Jack Nicholson is excellent and Harvey Keitel is very good. The beautiful and beguiling Mexican actress, Elpidia Carrillo, handles a limited role with enough artistry to make me wonder why I never heard of her before. Turns out she does have a healthy list of credits both internationally and in the US.

The direction by Tony Richardson, who had his heyday in the sixties with films as varied as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Tom Jones (1963), and The Loved One (1965), all adapted from novels, is at times inspired and artistic, and at other times as ordinary as dishwater. I don't think he was able to make up his mind while directing this film about whether he wanted win an award at Cannes or Venice or to just sell some tickets. As it turns out he did neither as well as he might have. Nonetheless as a snapshot of poor Mexican immigrants (and would-be immigrants) as they clash with the border patrol culture twenty-some years ago The Border is definitely worth a look. Particularly vivid is the depiction of the absurdities and hypocrisies among the coyotes, the "wets," the border patrol rank-and-file, the law and the realities of life along both sides of the thin strip separating the promised land from the third world.

Nicholson plays Charlie Smith, a border patrol cop with a trailer trash wife (Valerie Perrine) who yearns to move up to the luxury of duplex living. In particular she wants to move in next door to her high school girlfriend Savannah (Shannon Wilcox) who is married to the "Cat" (Harvey Keitel). Charlie Smith is a bit of an innocent who was satisfied with his trailer home and his sexy, loving, but not overly sharp, wife Mary. When they do pick up and move to Texas he runs headlong into the corrupt lifestyle of the Cat and the cruel realities of his job which consists of arresting illegal immigrants and sending them back to Mexico. Meanwhile Mary isn't just sitting home twiddling her thumbs. Instead she is out buying water beds and dinette sets, overstuffed chairs and sofas, and other knickknacks that put a strain on the couple's budget which leads Charlie into temptation. But when taking kickbacks turns to murder, Charlie draws the line in the sand (literally as it happens) and he and the Cat have a rather rude falling out. Meanwhile Charles spots Carrillo as the lovely Maria with babe in arms and a little brother at her side. Predictably the system cruelly exploits her, bringing Charlie to her rescue.

I think the striking contrast between Charlie's air-headed Mary and the desperate and needy Maria needed to be further explored. As it was played Charlie is just a good joe doing a good deed or two when in fact we know he is much more involved than that. I think the movie would have been improved by making him choose between the two women as he had to make the moral choice between going with the Cat's corruption or going against him.

See this for Jack Nicholson, one of the great actors of our time, who brings subtlety and veracity to a role that could have been ordinary, while giving us only a hint of the commanding and irreverent style that he would adopt in later years.

Great film, great Nicholson

At one point in his career, not that long ago, Jack Nicholson mentioned that of all the films he'd done, he thought The Border was his best. And he just may be right about that. His performance as a good, simple man who's caught up in the pressures of corruption and material life is perfect. Tony Richardson, director of such diverse films as Blue Sky and Tom Jones, knows how to keep the focus on his characters rather than on the superficial bulls**t that so often marks films these days. The supporting cast includes Harvey Keital, Warren Oates, and Valerie Perrine, and they, along with the remaining cast, are just as great as Nicholson is.

Keitel plays Cat, a fellow border patrol officer and Charlie's (Nicholson's) neighbor and so-called friend. Cat, the C.O. (Oates), a crude lowlife Texan, and a sleazy Mexican are all in on a corrupt scheme to sell wetbacks (Mexican laborers in the U.S.) for profit. When murder becomes part of the mix, Charlie--who had finally agreed to cash in--backs out and the others turn on him. He helps a young Mexican woman whose baby has been snatched and meanwhile tries to put up with his greedy wife (Perrine) who loves material objects more than life itself.

For some very strange reason, this film has sunk so far into the depths of obscurity that no one seems interested in releasing this on DVD. This is a great dramatic work and showcases not only Nicholson himself, but a story that means something, a director who knows how to do what has to be done, and a film whose emphasis is where it should be--on story and characters, not on shallow emotions that can be resolved with the snap of a special effects finger.

Very highly recommended.

One of Jack Nicholson's greatest performances

Of all Jack Nicholson's finest performances, this is without question the least rarely seen. Although Nicholson can excel at over-the-top performances, in many of his greatest, he goes to the opposite extreme. In this one, he rarely expresses emotion, rarely smiles, and instead communicates a simmering, barely contained rage at life and himself for having settled for being so much less than he ought and would like to be. By the end of the movie, he discovers that he has become a person he really doesn't want to know.

Told parallel to the story of Nicholson's descent into corruption is a Mexican woman who clearly wants to cross the physical borderline (just as Nicholson in the film has clearly crossed the moral borderline) with her baby to try and find a better life for him and her. Over and over we confront her and her trials, until her destiny becomes entwined with Jack Nicholson near the end of the film when he has to decide whether he will help her and run up against the other corrupt cops, or lose whatever tiny bit of self-respect he has left. The quiet, understated dynamic between their two stories is beautifully contrasted with the tawdriness of the lives of the border cops.

There are so many positives about this film: an incredible supporting cast, including Valerie Perrine as Nicholson's grasping, materialistic wife, Harvey Keitel as the corrupt border guard who pulls Nicholson into, and Warren Oates as a thoroughly despicable associate. I am not sure of the name of the young Mexican girl, but I love the innocence and yearning that she manages to project. The soundtrack is extraordinary, with one superb musical sequence after another by Ry Cooder, capped off by Freddy Fender's vocal on the Cooder-written "The Borderline."

The film is somewhat predictable, but, you know, I find that nearly all films are. Was this film does feature is a phenomenal performance by Jack Nicholson as a tortured, conflicted, unhappy man who barely managed to keep from losing all sense of his own worth and manages to salvage his humanity.

What's this? A restrained Nicholson performance?

If you'd like to see Jack Nicholson give a simple, compelling performance with absolutely none of his usual crowd-pleasing hambone antics, look no further than this seldom-seen drama. Nicholson is a United States border patrolman so exhausted and demoralized that he needs to do just one good deed to make life bearable: locate and bring back the baby of a young Mexican woman. He butts heads with his ditsy wife and corrupt co-worker and gets furious with both of them, but Nicholson's anger is that much more effective because he doesn't overplay it. The movie is small, with no extravagant themes and almost no action, but it holds your attention. On some level it may be a Peckinpah rip, but it's a good Peckinpah rip. Nicholson can always break out the stuff everyone loves and get an Oscar (as he did for his vastly overrated performance in "As Good As It Gets"), but smaller movies like this allow him to exercise muscles he doesn't often get to use any more, reminding us that he can be an actor and not just Jack the Wild and Crazy Guy.

Excellent drama set in West Texas, EL PASO!

I've been a fan of Jack Nicholson for years, and this is among his best films. Harvey Keitel and Valerie Perrine also turn in fine performances too. The storyline takes place in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, in which there is the border between the two places (the Rio Grande river, more specifically). It deals a lot with the illegal immigration problem, and other issues that occured at that time. Another reason that I love this film so much, is that literally, I was living in El Paso when it was made in 1981. El Paso is my hometown and the scenes filmed at the duplex were literally less than a block from my home. I as well as my parents watched quite a bit of the scenes there being filmed. (The scene where Jack hurls the barbeque into the pool seems to stick in my mind the most!) Anyway, it's very nice to watch this film and see my hometown as I remember it, particularily since I was there when it was made! But if you are a fan of Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, or Valerie Perrine, and/or like good, well made dramas, then I highly recommend this movie!