Ice Ice Baby
Across The Line (2000): 4 out of 10: is a neo-Western thriller that centers on a small-town Texas sheriff (Brian Bloom) and his involvement with an illegal immigrant (Writer/ Producer Sigal Erez)
The Good
The Good: The acting is great. It might seem I am complaining about some characters below. But that is their actions as dictated by the plot. Overall, the acting is solid across the board. Hell, they even got Adrienne Barbeau is this joint.
The location shooting also seems on point. For a movie clearly made on a budget, they make excellent use of real life locations. It is a well-made film for an independent production.
The Bad
The Bad: Everything is just exaggerated too much. I could buy one thing or two being comically exaggerated. But it seems to be every other scene. We have a cartoonish Guatemalan General coming to get the labor activist girl as she cartoonishly goes all Norma Rae at her sewing job.
The Border Patrol Guards which are like Vic and company from The Shield but somehow even more careless and over the top. The new guy being introduced to the murder of not just drug dealers in cold blood but a fellow agent and the torture and murder of two elderly American tourists. First day on the job? Really?
And of course the sheriff is running for reelection against a cartoon. His brother offers to help him out by pulling a few strings, and if the brother is not the unseen Mr. Big in the slaughter scene, I will eat my movie going hat.
The characters in Across The Line are just so cartoonish for something that takes itself so seriously. (The movie features murder, rape, suicide and, at one point, coffee spills).
It reminds me of the tone deaf and silly scene that starts out Crazy Rich Asians. It took me out of the movie for a while and it was hardly the only over the top cartoonish scene in the film. But in the end that is what kind of film Crazy Rich Asians was, so it worked.
Across The Line is a serious drama. And yet the details are often so exaggerated. A film could get away with one or two things like this. Across The Line seems like a serious drama about serious issues but is written by someone as if they were doing border patrol fanfiction.
The Amityville Horror is a ridiculous movie where the walls bleed. But the family is realistic. They act like real people. Across The Line seems to be missing that anchor in the real world in too many scenes.
The Ugly
The Ugly: TV Tropes has a trope called “Thrown from the Zeppelin” where in a group of bad guys one decides he is no longer a bad guy and announces this to the rest of the bad guy group apparently with no plan B. (Instead of leaving the meeting of evil with a nod they going to snitch to the relevant authorities)
The trope is named after a scene in the James Bond film “A View to a Kill” where an investor who decides he is now against the evil plan is … wait for it… thrown from a zeppelin.
I have pointed out the silliness of such a scene in movies such as Space Mutiny and The Legend of Zorro. Across The Line has a particularly poorly though out version of this scene when a Border Patrol Officer suddenly decides to arrest the head of the border patrol in the middle of an empty desert during a shootout. Gee, I wonder how that is going to work out?
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Sometimes you just don’t like a movie. I did not enjoy Across The Line. I try my best above to put into words why I feel this way. I certainly have enjoyed films with much worse flaws than this one has. There is plenty of action and nudity and the story may be silly, but it moves. Yet halfway through, I did not want to continue watching the film.
Like I said, sometimes a film just does not work for the person watching it. Across The Line did not work for me.
