Bordertown

Posted by Loukas Tsouknidas (loukas@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 1, 2007

It’s a known fact around the world, a universal truth if you may, that one man’s wealth is another man’s poverty. It’s not Marxism or any other profound theory, just common logic. When a country can provide cheaper labor, then its neighbors will come running, leaving their own people unemployed. Cheap labor means a license to exploit poor men, women and children to the maximum. And profit is above all in the corporate world. Duh!

Hello Bordertown. Like we needed Jenifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas to make a heavy political movie that accuses, judges and condemns capitalism for the women’s murders that have been taking place in the worker town of Juarez the past 15 years. It’s the same as Madonna or the Rolling Stones singing against the neo-cons (oooh!) without any background whatsoever that would give them the slightest credibility. The result is ridiculous, skin-deep and stale to the point of decay.

This review is for most of the movie but not all of it because… at some point I felt insulted and left the theater cursing and shadowfisting.

J-Lo plays the blonde (?) American journalist Lauren Adrian, one with a more than obvious Latin heritage, who comes to Juarez to investigate and report the case of the murdered and raped women workers. She seeks help from local journalist-activist and old friend-–we all know what that means- -Antonio Diaz (Banderas), but he’s not very happy about it. When a young girl escapes death by murder, Adrian takes her under her wing and with the help of Teresa Casillas (Sonia Braga) and Diaz she tries to find the truth behind the crimes…

Although the sets and cinematography create the proper atmosphere, Lopez seems to have come out of a different movie; a beautiful reporter who, in all this humidity and heat, never messes her “do” or breaks a sweat. Banderas is like a prop and nothing more. He supposedly struggles to combine activism and family life, but he easily passes on a chance to stick it to his enemies. What’s the point of fighting then?

Director Gregory Nava totally blows the chance to make a movie that deals honestly with a subject so delicate that it’s not even in the news. Instead, he creates a paper-thin melodrama about the Western woman who wants to contribute to the world and throw the career chasing amoral bitch stereotype off her back. That’s Lauren Adrian and soon after we have been manipulated to sympathize with the hard working but naive Indian girl–who by the way loves the Mexican pop idol “Juanes” (he has a cameo, no joke)–guess what? The director and writer focuses on the journalist’s own sexual frustration, her lonely road to success and how unfair it is to have to choose between that and a family. Not to mention her scattered memories of a Mexican-childhood-turned-adoption and the way she dispenses with her blonde hair, reconnecting with “the raza.” Booh! Hooh!

It’s right then that Lopez’s character has a wild one night stand with a local aristocrat AKA capitalist pig-–tough luck ugly peasants- -and we have to watch it as it happens. That’s when I drew my line. It’s an insult to women workers or even career chasers, the local people who carry a very real problem on their back, and to journalists that deal with similar cases around the globe.

That’s gotta be my worst cinematic moment for 2007. Fortunately, only a few people will experience it and J-Lo will stick to her singing. Adios.

Read more articles by Loukas Tsouknidas