On the Border

This movie is a compilation of many others. Studly loser from the big city is tagging the boss' wife/high society type and local beauty while planning bank robbery in a dusty town and winds up w/o the dough.(Don Johnson from The Hot Spot) New babe moves in and cleans the desert outpost. (Lone Wolf McQuade) How can we double cross the double-crossers? (Sharkey's Machine, Sunset, and the best of them all: Charley Varrick) The women (both) must be on top to writhe on Casper Van Dien in what I now call the "Sharon Stone Position" based upon the bronco riding style used in Basic Instinct. Oh, the list goes on. Did you notice the goof where they leave in Van Dien's blue Suburban to rob the bank but pull up in the new SUV? Read John D. MacDonald's "Bordertown Girl" for a better evening.

This was a crappy, miserably acted movie based on sublimated male fantasies. A shame that it was based in Texas, an otherwise excellent state. I would recommend this movie to no-one, and wish that it had never entered my consciousness as I am now so irritated that I wasted my brain cells even paying the slightest attention to it.

On the Border is executed well, for a trashy, sleazy film, with a mundane premise. Rochelle Swanson is something. It's an odd choice by Jake and naive by Barry to think he would like that deal and not be up to something. The dialogue's somewhat lacking, plenty filled with blank stares. It comes together nicely at the end though and better than can be expected.

On the Border is only one of films who use pieces from the film noire and western for a not surprise cocktail of love, secrets, revenge and money. far to be a bad movie, it is one with precise target. so, the recipes is the same for low cost productions with similar theme. the good guy who is almost gray, the bad guy, the woman between them. and few scenes of sex, as spice. short, a film with Casper Van Dien and Daniel Baldwin. nothing more. characters as old clothes, dialogues as sketches of confrontations, ambiguous plans and intentions.a nice film who preserves rules of genre and could be a kind of copy of many other classic thrillers.

This film starts out with all the moody promise of a great contemporary noir Western - after the ill-conceived opening flashback sequence anyway. The scenery is beautifully desolate, the characters achingly isolated. While some of the acting is less than believable, the plot ultimately delivers enough tension and twists to make this movie worth a look.

classic Western script , full of usual tricks, few sex scenes slices, Casper Van Dien in common role and not bad and not surprising ball of stories. tension is guaranteed and, for large number of viewers , that fact is the essence. a fake show if the expectations are too high. but not too far for to seem be a decent movie. because the recipes is respected, the acting is nice exercise to convince, the waterfall of events , predictable,represents a good choice. bad guys, good guy, victims from/of past. action, delicate flavor from classic films noir, and the impression, after its end, than it could be better but , for a TV film, is enough to be easy entertainment.