Bordertown

2007 "Lies. Corruption. Murder. One reporter will break the silence."
6| 1h52m| R| en| More Info
Released: 22 February 2007 Released
Producted By: Mosaic Media Group
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

American corporations are using the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening large maquiladoras right across the United States–Mexico border. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money in order to produce mass quantity products. Lauren Adrian, an impassioned American news reporter for the Chicago Sentinel wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan assigns her to investigate a series of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown.

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.
Steineded How sad is this?
Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
blanche-2 It was sad to me when people on this site asked if Gandhi was a fictional character, when they thought Judi Dench in "Ladies in Lavender" came off as a "dirty old lady," when they thought Kenny O'Donnell in "Thirteen Days" was a fictional character to give Kevin Costner a part when the film used White House transcripts (I guess they just stuck Kenny's dialogue into transcripts?) - it was sad. But to laugh and give a negative review to a movie that tells an important story, whether or not it stars Jennifer Lopez, is awful and shows that there are people who are regulars on this board who are not just stupid. They're complete morons.This is based on a true story about murders of young women that have been taking place in Juarez, Mexico for years, with a large number of women have been raped and murdered or simply disappeared. The women work in the maquiladoras, 24/7 companies that employ cheap labor, usually women, and create disposable products. Apparently the women are disposable too. The women are normally attacked as they are going home.Jennifer Lopez plays a reporter who is assigned this story against her will but becomes involved in it, protecting a young woman who dug herself out of her own grave, and going undercover in a maquiladora herself to uncover one of the murderers.This horrible situation is not dealt with efficiently by the government or the police. In part, this is due to political pressure and the fact that mob and drug money is often involved in the ownership of the factories.The North American Free Trade agreement, NAFTA, was expanded in 1994 and provided new opportunities for the maquiladoras. This was an issue director Gregory Nava wanted to explore, and Jennifer Lopez, Martin Sheen, and Antonio Banderas signed on. Because of the R rating and the opinion of several focus groups, it was not released in theaters. It's not a great movie. As a TV movie, it would have been much better. It also doesn't look very expensive. I don't happen to think Jennifer Lopez is a horrible actress. Unlike some here, I thought her back story, shown in flashback, was very clear.This is an important story, made by sincere people. One can at least appreciate that they wanted to raise awareness of this issue. It's easy to sit and criticize a film; it's another to go out and make one. And maybe a few people will think about a rich country like Mexico - rich in minerals, tourism, manufacturing -- that pays people $3 to $5 a day and has a population that lives in poverty while the people that control the money send it out of the country. Is it any wonder they try to sneak into the U.S.? Anything is better than how they are forced to live. And nothing is done to help them. Nothing.
elshikh4 This is a rare kind of movie. The real political thriller (where "thriller" doesn't preponderate "political") is not that available. I only remember movies like Costa-Gavras' Z, Oliver Stone's JFK, and a few more. (Bordertown), despite some minor weak points, comes simply without much noisiness to join the list of their elite.The script is the first hero here. It's loosely based on a series of unsolved murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an industrial border town near El Paso, Texas. Where innumerable young women have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered since 1993. It is a master choice when you find a story as rich as this especially when it got : a crime where the thrilling try to know the killer, chase him, then escape from his plots + a shadow, for this same hunt, for a bigger culprits including nations, firms and certain agreements + the realistic factor where the story is based on true events and live happenings still, unfortunately, happen ! Actually it could be the perfect movie for me. And it is that intensive to the extent where one watching is surely not enough.Look at the main character and its journey, she's firstly not that ideal fighter, she accepted the mission for just a professional promotion, but she goes through what makes it a self's case when she meets her tortured inner teenager in the surviving victim and seeks the revenge for them both out of the same circumstances or culprit. Let alone the hidden connection between that poor isolated factory on the border and the giant American electronics' business. Or the suppression that these companies compel so certain issues can't go public (it would push you to ask yourself why Britney Spears is on the head of news for nearly everyday while more important, urgent and effective stories didn't even see the light !!). "In every country there are laws for the rich people and others for the poor" how many times you hear a line like that in American movie?! And last but not the least, the clever basic symbol about the main 2 criminals, the bus's driver and the rich statesman; namely the ordinary internal putridity, and the authority's corruption that could sell the dignity or the safety of a nation to its enemies; it's where the rapist killer is – literally and metaphorically – the politician.There are many powerful points : the matter of Lopez's dyed hair as a way to disguise herself away from her truth, or to escape from her painful past or rather roots. Or the moment of Lopez getting out of the dirty factory with all the female workers after facing the rotten businessman; the way it was shot made her as if she's the conscience of this wronged nation. I must refer to the sequence when Lopez dressed like a factory girl; once because the driver takes her to another location this time while the police is waiting in totally different one (smart thrill), and once more because the movie makers didn't waste the chance to make the heroine discover accidentally a collective cemetery (another lethal putrefaction like there are more free killers, or that this community is stricken with a genocide of corruption!).The cinematography is another hero, being artistically realistic. Just observe the presence of the dark colors, especially the black, all the time. It's like a hurt hurting chromatic scream against injustice or the fat cartels as the real new devil. The cast did it right, but it was Lopez who got me utterly. She owned the screen, being sensitive, struggler, wounded, and believe it or not so sexy as well. The pace is genius to deliver all the action and sorrow in one movie. And originally the direction handled the job finely. It's that capably dark to an extent gives you suffocation's feeling during the watching. Rare time to witness that power in a movie was written and directed by the same person.However, nothing is fully perfect. There are some points that bothered me very. First of all, the explicit fabrication of the end's scenes when all the conflict's parties gathered illogically in one place while one fire to achieve the poetic justice at its best ! Add to that : the absence of the reason why Lopez's parents got killed ? The way Lopez was shooting all the buses' drivers with an obvious camera while nobody objected ? The strangeness of the attempt to kill Lopez and Banderas (looks like something had been added after the movie was done!). And finally the lost fact about the relationship that could gather a bus driver and a rich statesman !No doubt that the appearance of some Latino stars in this movie makes it a manifesto more than the Hollywood thriller. Speaking of which, while the movie is produced by Möbius Entertainment ?? Having none of the major studios' emblems at the start ?!, you've got to ask why Hollywood doesn't involve in this kind of movies very ? Maybe because Hollywood, the basically entertaining Hollywood, is a part of the fat cooperated America that this movie encounters. For example, in the same year of (2006) Hollywood gave us many movies with female leads and hot conflicts but such as (Silent Hill), (The Grudge 2), (UltraViolet), (Underworld: Evolution).. I think my point is so clear! Sometimes it's hard to believe but America, the home of freedom, does have problems with freedom, selecting or forcing sometimes not to explore the innermost.
Robert J. Maxwell All these young women are being murdered in and around Juarez. Nobody knows who's doing it or why. (True enough, though not often noted in the American press.) The editor of a Chicago newspaper (Martin Sheen) sends an ambitious reporter (Jennifer Lopez) to Juarez to investigate the events and report back to him. In Juarez, Lopez hooks up with an ex-lover (Antonio Banderas) who now runs the fictional newspaper Sol de Juarez. His is the only local paper taking the wave of murders seriously, the others treating them as minor incidents, perhaps the result of domestic violence. This is also the view of the police, who don't want to stir up any local muck. So Lopez and Banderas run into obstacles all along the way, even when they take under their wing a young woman who has almost miraculously survived an attack.The movie suggests that the real culprits here are the American-funded factories that were built in the border towns after the passage of NAFTA. The girls who work in these sweat shops, the maquiladoras, are not worth protecting -- not at four dollars a day -- and so are expendable because there are always more lining up for the jobs.This is a simple-minded explanation of a revolting, complicated, tragic and fascinating social problem. Some men, somewhere, have learned that it is easy to rape and murder a young woman around Juarez, bury her body in the desert, and walk away from it. And the movie slips us a formula, like an an easily swallowed pill, along the lines of "B is a function of A." Plot aside, the development of events is confusing. I lost track of the identity of some of the characters and their motives. The movie never sinks to the obvious level of a stereotypical slasher film, though. It's ambition prevents it, and presumably the writer and director's taste. The action scenes are handled fairly well.The photography is a distraction. It's in high contrast, such that if, in a sunlit room, a figure moves into the shadows, it disappears into the blackness while the rest of the environment remains an eye-numbing glare. And the images are in saturated yellow, seeming to overheat all the surfaces and turn them grimy and even more squalid than they already are. At night, they are blue but the same effect is achieved.There's nothing wrong at all with the performances. Jennifer Lopez is no longer the sex bomb of yesteryear but she's acquired more character as an actress, still has that enduring mandible and cantilevered rear end. Antonio Banderas, I like. The guy isn't exactly handsome but has a face and demeanor that are at once masculine and sympatico. Martin Sheen may be a little weak, or perhaps it's his formulaic lines being shouted over the roar of giant newspaper printers. ("Incredible humanity.") I wish this well-intentioned film had been better than it is. I think it's a mistake to simplify complex social problems into a conflict between a good side and a simple, single bad side. But that generates an even more disturbing thought. Suppose the film makers were right to boil this anfractuous story down into its bundle of two oppositions? Suppose the average viewer is unable any longer to grasp the multivaried aspects of a wave of unrelated murders of young women? Or -- well, not UNABLE to grasp complexity, just unwilling to put out the effort to do so? How much easier to pick a villain and stick to it. How much more appealing to an impatient public. How much more commercial. Even if genuine ambiguity must be thrown out the window.
davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Based around the true story of a series (or reportedly over a thousand!) cases of rape and murder of women in the Mexican town of Juarez, this has Jennifer Lopez as Lauren Adrian, an ambitious reporter who is sent to the town to investigate the crimes in exchange for getting a Foreign Correspondents job from her boss (Martin Sheen.) Once there, she runs into an old flame (Antonio Banderas) and learns the police are prohibiting any media discussion on the cases. She also comes into contact with Eva (Maya Zapata) who has survived an attack by the killer and has crawled out of her own grave. The young woman believes the devil himself is committing these crimes. A more cynical Lauren wants a flesh and blood suspect- but a haunting wall of silence is standing in her way.Any film with a political subtext is always going to run into controversy, but Bordertown would appear to have been a bigger victim than any other. It's facing a straight to DVD release in the US and if that happens, I can't see it faring any better over here, to be honest. The reason for the hush up of it's existence, it would appear, is so the US maintains good relations with the government of Mexico, and avoids pointing the finger at it and crying 'corruption.' That's the theory anyway, but if events have played out like they have in Bordertown there's little to prove the film wrong.One thing this impressive but grim film must be noted for is Lopez's performance in the lead role. She's really improved as an actress here, not trying too hard or over emoting anymore, just carrying the film with a natural air and grace that the role requires. She has good support, too, in the shape of Zapata, Sheen and Banderas, all giving their roles their all and making the story more dynamic as a result. Director Gregory Nova adds a tense air of mystery and dread to the tale, with some neat seat edge moments and constant air of danger.As if this disturbing and unsettling story isn't jolting enough, imagine how I felt watching it on my new widescreen Sony TV and thinking: the women in the story may have made that, working and going to/from work in the unfair and unsafe environment they do. Hell, even the laptop I'm writing this on now may have been made by them. As well as providing a thrilling but haunting true life story, Bordertown also opens your eyes to the equivalent of modern slave labour that provides us westerners with every luxury we enjoy and the true cost it comes at. ****