Protraph Lack of good storyline.

GazerRise Fantastic!

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

PWNYCNY Those believing that the illegal immigration into the United States is a new issue only need to watch this movie to refute that belief. This movie dramatizes the problem of illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico. This movie candidly those economic and social factors which contribute to the problem and why some choose to circumvent the law in order to sneak into the United States. Those who do sneak in of course do so at great risk, yet for some the risks are worth it because of the desperate need to make money. Dealing with this problem is especially challenging and risky for law enforcement, as this movie shows. The story is presented in semi-documentary form which gives it a feeling of authenticity which further adds to the movie's dramatic power. Watch this movie.

JLRMovieReviews Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, James Mitchell, and Charles McGraw star in this story about Mexicans who cross the border to California legally (and some illegally) to work and support their family back in Mexico. But, going back to Mexico, they are killed for their meager pay. In doing this, these certain "businessmen" can then get more Mexicans to come and work for them. It's all a racket, where these "businessman" make all the profits, until federal agents of America and Mexico are planted on the inside, who are George Murphy and Ricardo Montalban. George Murphy was mainly a song-and-dance guy in musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, but branched out to do other genres with this film, and I may never see him the same way again. Not so much because he was in it, but because of what happens. James Mitchell, who found fame later as "All My Children"'s Palmer Cortlandt, is on hand as a Mexican trying to find work to support his family. The film wraps up with unrelenting and uncompromising violence that does not talk down to its mature viewers. Little children, I should think, should not see this. For good actors in a solid picture directed by Anthony Mann, it's a Border Incident on the bill.

chaos-rampant This movie is very much like one of the most memorable images in it. It's late at night and we're inside a car crossing empty stretches of land kicking up a trail of dust on its path, at some point the beams of light from the headlights momentarily flash a strange running figure and then it's dark again and we've moved on because the movie is trying to get somewhere and there's a fascinating world of possibilities out in the vast arid expanses of land by the sides of the road but we're not allowed out of the car, we're only allowed glimpses from the windows of the speeding car.I know I shouldn't expect circumstantial treatment of plot in the name of suggestive atmosphere from a movie made in a time and place where movies were seldom allowed to be little more than narrative vehicles of premises and points (especially on the b-side level Anthony Mann was working on at the time), and Border Incident is pretty much that, bookended on both sides with voice-over narration that seems the careful studied product of some State Agency. We open with sweeping aerial shots of California farmland as the narrator boastfully muses on about "vast farm empires" and "lifegiving arteries of water". In the end we get handshakes between Mexico and US officials superimposed over the flags of the two countries and shots of farmers picking up bales of hay.Inbetween this Mann is allowed room for maneuvre but he's not allowed off the road. His duo with cinematographer John Alton ranks among the all time best's and you'll find ample evidence here, in the deep-focus arrangements, the unusual angles, the tricks with light and shadow, in the way Alton lights the back of a truck full of Mexican laborers using the flickering headlights of a car on its tail. The end conclusion happens in a place called the Canyon of Death so that Mann must forsake the elaborate tricks with light and shadow he could pull in the domestic setting of something like Raw Deal for heavy stark contrasts between lone figures against clear skies and processions of silhouettes snaking through dark walls of rock and it's great that way.All this, coupled with the unmistakable smell of a government-approved plot, reminds me of Mikhail Kalatozov's stunning collaborations with Sergei Urusevksy for the Soviet film industry. Like their films, Border Incident feels very modern in a roundabout way, there's no music at all for most of the film, and the whole thing is as much a product of its time as it is a forerunner of movies like Prime Cut, Charley Varrick, and gritnik cinema of 20 years later.

lastliberal A film older than I am and a top as fresh as the cable news this evening.This Anthony Mann directed film noir about those on both sides of the border who prey on illegal immigrants is deftly done with a director that has extensive experience in westerns and crime movies; his greatest achievement to come a decade later - El Cid.We lost Ricardo Montalban this year, but seeing him at 28 years old was a treat. he had a dozen and a half films by that time, and he was already a good actor.Not the usual film noir in dark alleys, but in the bright Mexican desert. The scene with the quicksand was especially heinous.