Customer Reviews

Bordertown

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

BORDERTOWN is more than a suspenseful film about a tragic reality that has been terrifying Juarez, Mexico for years. This film, written and directed by Gregory Nava ('Mi Familia', 'El Norte', 'Selena', etc), approaches a public service campaign on the part of Nava and the rest of his cast and crew - especially producer/star Jennifer Lopez. After the stunning effect of the film, the viewer is encouraged to watch the several excellent featurettes on the DVD - and then try to remain uninvolved.

Chicago Sentinel editor George Morgan (Martin Sheen) convinces the reluctant reporter Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez) to fly to Juarez, Mexico to cover a combustible story about the ongoing rapes and murders of women who work the factories along the border for little pay. Lauren would prefer becoming a foreign correspondent and extracts a promise that if she takes on this ugly assignment ('I don't speak Spanish and I don't know anything about Mexico'), Morgan will grant that request. When the beautiful blond Lauren arrives in Juarez she is shocked by the reality: a very young factory worker girl Eva (the fine young actress Maya Zapata) has managed to survive a rape and attempted murder, literally climbing out of her grave and escaping. Lauren and Eva bond and Lauren realizes that her story about the 5000 victims of this heinous serial killing may just rest with the information Eva holds: she can identify her assailants. With the aid of anxious newspaper owner Alfonso Diaz (Antonio Banderas) the three begin the dangerous struggle to unveil the truths about the cover-up of the deaths: the police and government corruption in Mexico are matched by similar deeds in the USA in order to protect the NAFTA arrangement which apparently holds the profit of the mega-factories of more importance then the mere lives of thousands of Mexican women. How the trio infiltrates the corruption (and the buried secret realities of Lauren's humble beginnings) provide the remainder of the film.

Nava elects to shoot this film in garish light and emphasizes the tragic filth and mire of the living conditions of the peasants along the border - each hoping to escape the life situations by crossing into the US. He manages to maintain a coarse cinematic effect that enhances the story. Not only Is Lopez in top form, but also she is assisted by a fine cast of fellow actors including Sonia Braga, Juan Diego Botto, Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, Rene Rivera among others. Yes, the story has been told before, but that only means there are many people who want this contemporary tragedy to end. In one of the features on the DVD we are given addresses and names to contact to help stop this horrendous 'feminicide'. Take serious note. Grady Harp, February 08

I was actually skeptical when I first came across this movie. But I took a chance on seeing it. Now I can't wait until it actually comes out on DVD. This is an EXCELLENT film. Being that I'm a US Citizen living in Mexico for a few months I see exactly what the film is talking about. It's just a shame that not many people actually know what is going on here. This film could be a cultural phenomenon that could help to change things. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY AMAZING FILM. Only problem that I had was that J.Lo is trying to act like a stereotypical "gringa" and it's really easy to hear her accent. Other than that, I loved the movie.

Loosely based on several of the many Ciudad Juárez murders, BORDERTOWN is two parts docudrama/political commentary and two parts suspense/thriller. Though the subject of the film is an important one, the movie does suffer from a few major flaws.

Most likely, you've heard little or nothing about the 15-year serial killing spree(s) in the neighboring Mexican cities of Juárez and Chihuahua. Probably you've read a short article, maybe buried in the back of the "international" section of your local paper, about the latest death toll. Maybe you've seen a few pieces over the years, each giving rise to an eerie sense of déjà vu: "Haven't I read this before? Didn't the police already catch this killer? Surely this is a different case..."

Between 1993 and the present day, at least 400 women, primarily employed in the maquiladoras established along the Mexican/American border, have been found dead. Raped, murdered, strangled, mutilated. Dumped like trash. Another 5,000+ women are reported missing. Most likely they are dead, but their families will never know, can never rest, because there is no outcry, no investigation, no justice. Government corruption, police incompetence, and international indifference have all conspired against justice. After all, these are poor brown women we are talking about. Disposable women in a disposable society.

BORDERTOWN attempts to tell the tales of all these women through the story of one girl, Eva Jimenez, a 16-year-old factory worker who is kidnapped on her way home from work, raped, and buried alive. Left for dead. Though her assailants - two men, gang rapists - thought they killed her, she survives and, with the help of two reporters (played by Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Baderes), tries to bring them to justice.

While I generally enjoyed the movie (as much as you can "enjoy" a movie about femicide), it does tend towards the melodramatic at times. The acting is generally adequate, though Maya Zapata is a standout as Eva. (So much so that I immediately hopped onto Netflix and put all her films in my queue.) Most of the melodrama is due to the script, rather than overacting. There are also a few plot holes, which I won't get into for fear of spoiling the ending. However, one is so large that you'll know it when you see it. (Just in case you don't, a hint: it involves the trial and the immediacy of Eva's testimony.)

Even so, BORDERTOWN is monumental film, in that it addresses an ongoing situation of gross human rights abuses that the mainstream media has largely ignored. Any time you can get A-list stars to sign on to such a project, it's a big f'in deal. And while the film itself isn't as rigorous in detailing the Ciudad Juárez gender-cide as I would prefer - the subplot about Lopez's childhood and her character's relationship with Banderes was distracting at best - it's still a good vehicle for getting the message out, for letting people know what is and isn't happening south of the border. The DVD extras, which include two documentaries ("Exposing the Juarez Murders: The Making of Bordertown" and "La Frontera - The Border"), as well as a "get involved" menu (the first time I've ever seen that on a DVD!) are particularly poignant and compelling. So while it certainly isn't a great movie - maybe a B-/C+ at best - it is still a movie that you, along with your friends and family (and Lou Dobbs, if you can compel him!), should see.

And, after the movie's over, don't forget about these women like the rest of the world. Use the resources provided to learn more, to take action, to get involved. As Eva Canseco explains in "La Frontera - The Border", we're all citizens of the same community; we need to protect one another, to care what happens to our neighbors, to act while we still have the agency to do so. The women raped and murdered, the men tortured into confessing - they could easily be you or I. Human rights abuses are not limited to "developing" or "third world" nations. Read the paper more closely (better yet, a feminist blog or two) and you'll be surprised to see what's happening in your own backyard.

I didn't know a thing about this powerful film before a friend of mine in Mexico City alerted me to it. We usually hear everything about what's going on in the life of Jennifer Lopez, but her starring role in this film was largely ignored. After watching it, I understood why; "Bordertown" addresses issues that the ruling elite don't want us to think about - NAFTA, so-called "free" trade, violence against women, political corruption, a subservient press Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media, class war and so forth.
Contrary to the criticism of one reviewer that the politics of the film are "confused," the politics are actually quite clear and accurate. Female workers in towns like Juarez are being treated like slaves, and the wealth of their labor is being concentrated in the hands of the corporations that moved there to avoid taxes, labor concerns and environmental regulations. The result is a dysfunctional dystopia of crime, violence and poor health.
To further explore these issues, I'd recommend:
The Fourth World War
Class War: The Attack On Working People (Spoken Word)
The Corporation
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
On the Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez
No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Nacla Report on the Americas
The Selling of "Free Trade": NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy
Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization

I have seen almost all of Jennifer Lopez' movies and I came across this one, which I hadnt even heard of. This movie is amazing. It's based on a true story about the factory women in Juarez, Mexico who have been found murdered or still missing and noone was doing anything about it. Jennifer Lopez plays a journalist who is determined to find the truth about whats going on, along with another journalist played by Antonio Banderas. Since I knew nothing about this story before hand, I was uterly thrilled to see the outcome, hoping that they found the killers and things would get better but it was much more than that. What an amazing portral of what goes on in Mexico. May those women rest in peace. If you havent seen this movie, do so.

I can't reccomend this film highly enough. See it. It's news you won't see on CNN. I have never liked Lopez, but this movie isn't about her or Banderas. It's also not a typical hollywood movie either.

The central theme never deviates away from the story about a 16 year old sole survivor of an attack and her desire to survive, which means she needs to capture her attackers or they will kill her because she can identify them. The story is very human and a realistic protrayal of how systems and cultures can work against victims without being obvious.

Anyone saying the film is political has discounted the reality and importance of these rapes and murders, now numbering in the thousands within the last few years. No single authority has even attempted to document them all until recently, and that's been through human rights groups. This story should be embarrassing for authorities - on both sides of the border.

There are various subjects explored which might create the circumstances that allow these crimes to continue happening, such as corruption, NAFTA, class, greed, racism, bias, corporations, but they are not conclusive, central or over-dramatized. But even the exploration of these subjects will make this film politically unpopular and even more important to see.

A very disturbing movie that we all should take our time to watch.
Outstanding acting and a story that we all should stop in front off and appreciate how luck we are that we leave in countries there we can take the "bad guys" to justices. There is so many countries where women are not protected in the society and this movie only shows as one country.

Very strong movie that should touch us all at heart, man and woman.

Bordertown where "Enough" meets "Traffic". This movie is a must, must , must see !!!!It gives a very informative,accurate and dramatic presentation of the exploitation of women currently going on along the US/Mexican Border. Bordertowns, like Tijuana and Juarez are set up by the complicity of Multinational Conglomerates, Corporations and the US and Mexican Governments,and legalized and endorsed by NAFTA,the Free trade agreement. The conditions have been created and sanctioned for legal exploitation of women. The economic policies created by NAFTA, are created for corporate profits, motivated by greed and have no provision for workers rights. Poverty and taxes move these women to these "bordertowns", away from their homes and family where they are forced to live in "ghettos" set up by by the various conglomerates. As strangers to their environment they are isolated and invisible, forced into submissive labor and to conditions which make them invisible to society, governments and the world. The US and Mexican Governments have chosen profits over womens right and have once again created conditions for exploitative labor that was criminalized in the US in 1908.Women are "chosen" over men for these indentured position since they are less likely to be "seen" , complain and unrecognized as human beings. Bordertowns have created the condition for these women to literally disappear into these ghettos and factories and find themselves vulnerable for any and all forms of exploitation; including sex trade, murders, forced pornography ,organized crime. Anyone looking to exploit,rape, harm and kill women. Ms Jennifer Lopez deserves recognition for a great and intense performance. The film chronicles the work of a reporter( Ms. Lopez) sent by a Chicago newspaper to investigate the systematic disappearance of the Women in Juarez. AS this reporter starts to uncover the truth, she realizes the magnitude of the complicity of Corporations, Conglomerates and Governments for profit. This then becomes her own personal journey to find her true self and her life's purpose. . As she tries to expose the truth she realizes that she has become a target since she becomes a threat both Governments and Corporate interest and puts her own life in jeopardy.

I saw the film on ON-Demand Cable last night and had to watch it twice. Truly a great film, that apparently has been neglected, due to it's controversial content. Gregory Nava has made an important and gripping film, that should be required viewing for all politicians and business people who fail to see the human side of the profit motive.

Jennifer Lopez gets to prove once again she is a great actress and Antonio Banderos is more then a Latin Lover.

Why this movie did not get the recognition and viership it deserves must be part of the story. A sequel would be very appropriate about now.

Allowed for exhibition in Mexico City for what amounted hardly to three weeks, this suspenseful, gritty, moving thriller with an Oscar-worthy script brings to mind two others: Hotel Rwanda (a globally ignored, unhinging genocide) and the Brave One (a not-so-credible story of a self-centered and unhinged woman carried to success only by Jodie Foster's sublime acting). The viewer, I feel, will be able to tell why after they see "Truths that Kill"/"Verdades que Matan" (its title in Mexico), a title that for melodramatic Mexican ones is, for once, too right. Everything in this story of femicide-genocide is rooted in these hard truths, wilfully ignored by at least two partners of an agreement known as NAFTA, so much so that the story could not be explained without them, so much so that they continue to kill even as I am writing.
Truths that will continue to kill unless visionary and creative leaders in both Mexico and the U.S. have the guts to renounce the "free"-trade doctrine, have the courage to substitute the word FAIR instead of "free" in the North-American (Not)Free-Trade Agreement.
I vaguely knew Gregory Nava, had not realized that other bright, smart evocative thriller, "Mi Familia", was made by him. Now I have watched how meticulously he reconstructed the facts of what could be the life of any one of those girls working in a row daily at maquiladoras I can say how extremely impressed I am by his devotion to a job of love; how his constant collaboration with Jennifer Lopez (it's amazing and worrying how mainstream media have trivialized her and what she does- a brilliant actress so rightly cast for the role, whose capacity I first knew in seeing that little-known fable on forgiveness directed by Robert Redford, "An Unfinished Life".
Much has happened since the inception of the maquiladora program, from the days when young girls taken from the surrounding regions were involved by USAID in a program providing them with contraceptives so they didn't get pregnant and slowed-down productivity. López embodies Lauren Adrian, a strong but not cold woman, courageous and resolved as so many Mexican women are, so human even in her mistakes, but with a vulnerability that toward the end will turn into her strength and turn her life around. She's a reporter in a Chicago paper, she covets a foreign-correspondent position. Instead she is sent to investigate the rapes and killing of -officially- between 375 and 700 women in Ciudad Juárez and its offshoots like the Colonia Anapra. Almost all killed women were workers in Juárez's maquila factories. After reluctantly giving in, she looks for the help of Díaz (Banderas), an erstwhile co-investigator and (maybe) something else. She went away but now she hopes he will help her out.
Antonio Banderas is so convincing as the director of modest newspaper El Sol de Juarez, which dangerously insists on exposing the truth on the killings as they happen, though often its copies will be confiscated by authorities as soon as they are released. What I find amazing is he never shows off his celebrity, he'll get under the skin of the ordinary, somewhat beaten up overwhelmed man struggling to keep running the sole paper in Juarez unwilling to toe the corrupt authorities' line. What Diaz tells Lauren on the unofficial figures for raped and killed working women in Juarez, is unbelievable but most surely one more Truth.

Though not exactly allowed to film in Juarez, Nava perfectly clinches the oppressive climate that the population and these women live in. Under a non-sheltering, blinding-light sky, under a suffocating heat, mothers of missing daughters daily pry every inch of vast stretchs of arid land, they are the only ones able to find their dead daughters' bodies. Under orders, police is unable to find even a single one.
The unexpected jewel in the film is 16-year-old Eva, fleshed out by Maya Zapata, who surely seems the most promising actress any side of the border. An indigenous girl, most significantly from Oaxaca, natural and unpretentious, she is one of the girls chosen to be doomed but decidedly will not, the survivor who refuses to remain the victim, whose decision for life and justice moves forward the events and through her own vulnerability turns Lauren's into the strength which ultimately will make her whole and help Eva herself find a modicum of light and justice at the end of her own particular dark tunnel.
Brilliant as well is Martin Sheen, the only fine actor who could deliver to Lauren the news of the sad present state of investigative reporting in the face of big politics and corporatocracy, and mainstream media's servitude to them.
Of course differences in acting styles are apparent, but even this plays to the movie's advantage, to point out the sharp contrast between prosperous owners of the assembled computers and T.V.s in the US and poor, traditional-valued poor families' struggle to survive.
You see, Mexico is one of those now-not-so-singular places where the vast majority of nationals own nothing. Whole rural families headed by women --the men are long ago "on the other side", or trying to get "there"-- are despoiled of the most basic resources and thus have to head North. Poverty is then feminized, the fact that migrants are now women unleash a series of nefarious consequences; they could be avoided, and dignity restored, if only the countries involved had the political will to provide the resources and prevent these dire consequences. Many women in Juarez were harassed and/or received death threats for having provided the information necessary to tell the story. Thanks to their courage the viewer, as another reviewer noted, will be challenged to try not to help. The DVD offers the resources to do it. Conscionable and generous viewers would like to do something for these abandoned women and our poor in general (the present administration often seems to want to erradicate poverty by altogether eliminating the poor), and maybe this help will turn on a light that will conduct these punished people (and their counterpart in the US) out of the NANFTA --the North-American, Not-Fair-Trade Agreement-- tunnel.

[Friends interested in knowing more can also read the fine NACLA's report on the matter in its last weekly update, "NAFTA's Road to Ruin: The Decline of the Mexican Social Compact", Parts I and II, www.nacla.org. On the poor's immigration, David Bacon book "The Economic Politics of Migration" is most illustrative.]