Reviews

This is the worst Michael-Bay-aping pseudo film I've ever seen. The acting is pathetic, the direction cretinous and the filming of the dance numbers downright criminal. The editor must have thought he was a wizard with all this frantic pasting, but it shows total disrespect for the dancers.The scene where the terrorist is eliminated somewhere in the open Canadian countryside is so unbelievably derivative (those RESERVOIR DOGS shots of guys clad in black advancing in slow-motion toward the camera)and ridiculous (the good guys seem to be impervious to bullets) it has to actually be promoted as a prime example of idiotic direction.And Sanjay Dutt must make a dramatic elephant out of the slightest existential fly. For the most undiscriminating audience only.

OK, so Caouette has had a shitty life! His mother and his grand-parents are pretty fucked up. But why should that interest the public at large? Only when an artist digests his preoccupations with something resembling style and a personal touch, can these elements amount to anything interesting. Caouette uses gimmicks used fifty years ago, when the new York Underground reigned supreme.There is nothing new nor interesting in his way of filming: let's shake the camera a bit, distort the colors and look at faces from a curious angle (big deal). The only time his film grows on you is when he confronts his mother in Texas when she's completely freaked out about some pumpkin. Her madness at that moment peaks through and it's scary.But as to whether Caouette will one day become a worthwhile director, I'm pretty much inclined to say I don't see the least sign of it. Anybody can film his relatives and tie a storyline with weighty inter-titles and gloomy announcements. This has nothing to do with cinema, Gus Van Sant notwithstanding.

The film has long static takes that add absolutely nothing to the comprehension of a particular situation. As a matter of fact, I've read newspaper articles on the subject that were much more comprehensive and gave me a better feeling for the sufferings of the migrants than this rather pointless exploration of the walled-up border between the richest country and the Third world. One observer has it wrong: the five minute take along a seemingly endless line of automobiles is not on the American side, but on the Mexican side. The cars are queuing up to cross the border. Never does the camera cross the border during this tracking shot, which is evidently reminiscent of the initial shot of TOUCH OF EVIL (where it does cross the border). The first shot actually taken on the American side is probably the interview of the Mexican consul in Douglas.