Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

***No major spoilers here - nobody likes their movie ruined, just a fairly critical review.***I just watched it, and I loved this movie, but not for the reasons anyone else listed.Professional sarcast Lore Sjöberg's Law of Cinematic Inaccuracy goes: "Movies get everything wrong. Hacking-based movies are laughable to hackers, military-based movies are laughable to members of the armed forces, and Indiana Jones movies are laughable to archaeologists." I believe the original version also included cop shows are laughable to cops.I found Across The Line so unrealistic that it was downright hilarious. I found myself laughing through almost every scene.As someone who's lived and worked on the border - including many of the towns portrayed and mentioned in the film, this movie is comedy gold.The portrayal of the Border Patrol is so over-the-top that even members of The Race (not the Harry Turtledove space lizards, the racists at "The Race" aka La Raza) wouldn't buy it. But it's SO unbelievably over-the-top that it's hilarious unintentional parody of what a certain political mindset thinks."The coyote" is singularly hilarious on his own, and Eagle Pass, TX as an _actual pass_, as opposed to a city of about 50,000 people (which is really just the nicest neighborhood in Piedras Negras, Mexico with a population of 170,000 or so) is comical.The "touching story" tells a wonderfully fictional narrative of a college-educated woman who runs from political oppression in Central America and seeks to get into the US to get away from it. In real life, all she'd have to do is go to a regular Port of Entry and declare asylum. There's a lot of paperwork and hassle, but no need to hike through the desert, let alone go through Mexico, where she can be detained and arrested even by Mexican citizens as an illegal alien. She can actually fly to an international airport in the US and just declare asylum there.One thing that was done right, though hamfistedly, was that coyotes exploit OTMs. They know they can always turn them over to Mexican authorities - who actually are as bad as Ms. Erez wrote the USBP to be. The sad thing is that for less than the coyote's price, they can usually get visas or resident papers if they didn't choose to break the law.From a technical standpoint, the movie is visually fun to watch. The lighting work is excellent, and both indoor and outdoor scenes were filmed pretty darn well. Editing was solid, and a few scenes that weren't related to Ms. Erez's overt and hilariously wrong political narrative were actually humanizing.Brad Johnson is excellent in his part, quite believable, even if he's a bit wooden at times, and many of the lines he (and every other character) delivers are forced, or the kind of cheesy, ridiculous political commentary thrown into characters' mouths that's just laughable by itself. When he's given good lines and scenes - even unintentionally humorous clichéd ones, he does quite well, as does Marshall Teague.Sigal Erez's character is... well, she wrote it, and she used the character to tell the story she wanted to tell (however disparate from reality it is). Her perception of the border is every bit as fictional as her film, sad to say. She CAN act - if given something that was more than a just an unabashedly political piece, I think she'd do very well. She'd do quite well if she did a political piece that was a bit more subtle than a carpet bombing raid. Ms. Erez herself is very pleasant to watch on screen, and her film is genuinely made with good intent. She'd do well to do significantly more research and write a realistic story. With the same effort she put into Across The Line, she could've made a genuinely good film.The supporting cast does a pretty good job as well doing what Ms. Erez wanted them to do, even though they're also caricatures and stereotypes. The characters being so vividly, overtly, intentionally out to tell Ms. Erez' unreal message makes them laughable, even if they're portrayed technically well by actors.Adrienne Barbeau being in the movie reminded me of when Alice Cooper showed up in John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" as "street schizo". It makes no sense, you just realize "hey, that's Adrienne Barbeau!", and you just run with it.To sum up, it was so woefully inaccurate and consistently absurd that it made me laugh the whole way through, the scenes were well-lit and technically done well, the casting was good, and the apolitical scenes are sometimes quite good. Too bad the story wasn't one grounded in reality - it would've made a great film all-around - instead, the story turns it into 24 karat comedy gold to anyone who actually knows the border.

I was very interested to see that Senora Erez was both a co-author and producer of this this movie. The plot brings out the human plight of undocumented workers who seek only a better life. We see Sra. Erez' impact through various scenes depicting the personal, emotional and every-day similarities between Caucasians and Latinos - showing so clearly we are all the same. The story was very interesting and exciting and the love story arc very believable. I think most any viewer would enjoy this modest movie and appreciate the good performances of all, especially Sra. Erez and Brad Johnson, plus the even, skillful direction by Martin Spottl.

Seeing this film as a pre-screener for a film festival, I'm in no way connected to this film, which seems to be the suspicious case with the previous two comments, especially the one from Texas. Not because of where it was from, but in the virtual press release that it seems to be.This film is a well made potboiler, with good performances all around, although my suspicions about the lead actress not necessarily being the best one they could find (I do freelance casting) were confirmed when i saw she co-wrote and co-produced the film. She's good, but I'm sure someone else could have been better. (Take note, Mr.Skin.com! She ain't shy.) The story held me, and Brad Johnson is extremely good. Hey Hollywood, get him a new TV series or TNT western! And get Brian Bloom one, too. (An excellent villain.) But if you're gonna use Charlie Daniels on the soundtrack and give him a main credit, give him more than the title song. (If he wrote the score, it could have done with a little less Mexican guitar during the shootout scene. A little cliched.)And how the heck did Adreienne Barbeau agree to such a nothing role? (I won't give it away why it's so short.) I just cast an indie film with star talent attached, and I'm amazed they got her to do such a small role. (Cowboy)hats off to the casting director!If anyone sees this in a video store, it's a good 97 minutes to spend. If you see it at a film festival, you could do worse. If you see it at a theater, don't expect greatness. Just a well done good vs. evil film making you root for the hero, and hiss the bad guys.

The wonderful acting by Sigal Erez is likely to be the first outstanding thing that one notices in this film. Her character is created with intensity, partly by the amazing acting and partly by the well-written script. But the entire cast is excellent, including fine performances by actors whose work I had not previously known--for example, Julio Dolce Vita, Carlos Carrasco, and Brian Bloom are especially good. Bloom's anger and brutality are as convincing as the reassuring humanity of Dolce Vita and Carrasco. (Bloom's astonishing feat of leaping, in one fast action scene, is among the most dextrous film leaps that I've seen).The story concerns the troubled lives of border-crossing Latinas and Latinos, and also the equally troubled history of the official responses to these immigrants in the U.S. But the film is never preachy. The action is fast or tender, always moving, convincing, and shot with the art that conceals art. Like the careful and and smart photography, the awareness of the film's deeper resonance is likely to occur to you only later, when you return to it, which I have already done several times.Movies with which to compare this one include THE BORDER, EL NORTE, and LONE STAR. Nowhere among these movies is any performance as subtle, skillful, and deep as what Sigal Erez achieves in ACROSS THE LINE. And under Spottl's superb direction, this film is an outstanding contribution to that line of good movies. Highly recommended--one of the very best recent films.