What a dark movie! Everything seems to happen at night. Ricardo Montalban is a member of "the Mexican FBI" and George Murphy his counterpart at the INS. They form a partnership to investigate the illegal smuggling of braceros (Mexicans with temporary worker programs) across the border where they are exploited by unscrupulous American interests, then robbed by bandits when they return to Mexico.
Talk about your contemporary problems! It's a decent mystery. The acting is up to snuff. The direction and the photography are professionally competent.
And that's about it. Ricardo Montalban gives a good performance and the rest are middling. I prefer Sig Rumann in comic roles, maybe alongside the Marx Brothers, whereas he's a serious heavy in this one. There is always Alfonso Bedoya, along with one of his henchmen from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," but he doesn't have much to do except mangle the English language and his character provides no deliberate relief from the intensity of the story.
There's something -- unconvincing? Is that the word? Not a moment goes by when you forget you're watching a movie. No matter how hard I tried I was unable to suspend my disbelief. Ricardo Montalban may be too handsome to be a bracero. His haircut is not that of a poor laborer but a Hollywood star. In fact all of the braceros seem too well groomed. Their clothes don't seem lived in, although they are all provided with bundles wrapped in serapes, and they all wear straw sombreros. They're burdened with lines like, "Tell me, my husband, is it dangerous?" And it's impossible to sense any feelings of social responsibility behind or in front of the camera. Watch "Viva Zapata" with its screenplay by John Steinbeck for an illustration of what's lacking here. And watch "Traffic" for a treatment of the systemic problem that does not devolve into a Manichaean struggle of the good guys versus the bad guys. There are ethical problems on both sides of the border, although the ones on the Mexican side seem to dwarf those on the other, as that perceptive reviewer Howdymax has observed. Also -- what is the Imperial Valley except a flat desert irrigated by water absconded from the Colorado River? I mean, there are groves of date palms in Indio. But there is no sense of the desert in this movie. Most seems to have been shot in the studio or on the back lot. The "place" is missing.
There is one unforgettable scene though, in which George Murphy is sliced and diced by an agonizingly slow-moving diesel-pulled harrow. (I think that's what it is. There wasn't much farm machinery in Newark.) Murphy, by a curious coincidence, was elected to the Senate from California back in the 60s. There was a small furor at the time over the ethics of the bracero program. They were getting pretty shabby treatment and some wanted to end the program. Murphy's position on the issue was firm. He approved thoroughly of the bracero program. Braceros, he argued, were better at picking lettuce and carrots and melons because "they were built closer to the ground." I swear I'm not making that up.
Well, the movie may be obsolete but the questions aren't. It makes for interesting viewing.
Talk about your contemporary problems! It's a decent mystery. The acting is up to snuff. The direction and the photography are professionally competent.
And that's about it. Ricardo Montalban gives a good performance and the rest are middling. I prefer Sig Rumann in comic roles, maybe alongside the Marx Brothers, whereas he's a serious heavy in this one. There is always Alfonso Bedoya, along with one of his henchmen from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," but he doesn't have much to do except mangle the English language and his character provides no deliberate relief from the intensity of the story.
There's something -- unconvincing? Is that the word? Not a moment goes by when you forget you're watching a movie. No matter how hard I tried I was unable to suspend my disbelief. Ricardo Montalban may be too handsome to be a bracero. His haircut is not that of a poor laborer but a Hollywood star. In fact all of the braceros seem too well groomed. Their clothes don't seem lived in, although they are all provided with bundles wrapped in serapes, and they all wear straw sombreros. They're burdened with lines like, "Tell me, my husband, is it dangerous?" And it's impossible to sense any feelings of social responsibility behind or in front of the camera. Watch "Viva Zapata" with its screenplay by John Steinbeck for an illustration of what's lacking here. And watch "Traffic" for a treatment of the systemic problem that does not devolve into a Manichaean struggle of the good guys versus the bad guys. There are ethical problems on both sides of the border, although the ones on the Mexican side seem to dwarf those on the other, as that perceptive reviewer Howdymax has observed. Also -- what is the Imperial Valley except a flat desert irrigated by water absconded from the Colorado River? I mean, there are groves of date palms in Indio. But there is no sense of the desert in this movie. Most seems to have been shot in the studio or on the back lot. The "place" is missing.
There is one unforgettable scene though, in which George Murphy is sliced and diced by an agonizingly slow-moving diesel-pulled harrow. (I think that's what it is. There wasn't much farm machinery in Newark.) Murphy, by a curious coincidence, was elected to the Senate from California back in the 60s. There was a small furor at the time over the ethics of the bracero program. They were getting pretty shabby treatment and some wanted to end the program. Murphy's position on the issue was firm. He approved thoroughly of the bracero program. Braceros, he argued, were better at picking lettuce and carrots and melons because "they were built closer to the ground." I swear I'm not making that up.
Well, the movie may be obsolete but the questions aren't. It makes for interesting viewing.