Bordertown
by Gregory Nava
List Price:
Our Price: $4.95
You Save: $10.03 (67%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.73 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Antonio Banderas, Irineo Alvarez, Juan Diego Botto, Maya Zapata, Zaide Silvia GutierrezDirector: Gregory Nava
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
Published: 2008-01-01
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-29
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: VELOCITY / THINKFILM
DVD Reviews of Bordertown
DVD Review: One of best thrillers, try hard not to get involved.
Summary: 5 Stars
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.]
Description of Bordertown
BORDERTOWN - DVD MovieBestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Monster-in-Law (New Line Platinum Series)New Line Home Entertainment; Release date: 2005-08-30; Published: 2005-08-01; DVD
Best price: $2.48
Price in other shops:
SelenaWarner Brothers; Release date: 2007-05-15; DVD
Best price: $3.85
Price in other shops:
Angel EyesWarner Brothers; Release date: 2001-10-16; DVD
Best price: $4.40
Price in other shops:
My FamilyNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2004-04-06; Published: 2004-04-01; DVD
Best price: $2.77
Price in other shops:
El CantanteNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2007-10-30; DVD
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
EnoughSony; Release date: 2002-10-08; DVD
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops:
An Unfinished LifeBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2006-04-11; Published: 2006-04-01; DVD
Best price: $6.14
Price in other shops:
Lost in the WildFirst Look Pictures; Release date: 2005-06-21; DVD
Best price: $1.20
Price in other shops:
Human TraffickingEcho; Release date: 2006-05-02; DVD
Best price: $2.93
Price in other shops:
TradeLions Gate; Release date: 2008-01-29; DVD
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops: