The Invader: Grade A

A

The Invader (2011).

Isaka Sawadogo, Stefania Rocca, Serge Riaboukine; Co-writer and Director Nicolas Provost. (French, subtitled).

Amadou (Sawadogo) is an illegal immigrant into Belgium from some unspecified country. He works construction jobs for an abusive, exploitative boss. He spies a wealthy woman (Rocca) who has some shady construction contract for his boss, and follows her. Turning on the charm, he gradually persuades her to go out with him, and a hot sex scene follows.

It is just marginally plausible that she would agree to that relationship but Sawadogo carries such on-screen charisma and charm, and Roccia projects a steamy hidden desire and arrogance, so we believe it. But when she discovers he is actually just a common worker, and illegal at that, she wants nothing more to do with him. He, however becomes obsessed with her and stalks her. Finding her social and economic world utterly closed to him, he turns violent. He kills first his boss, then several others.

I don’t actually remember how it ends. Badly, no doubt. But the message I took away was about how frustrating it would be for an immigrant with no resources to get a foothold in a foreign society that wants only his labor but not his humanity. Living cheek to cheek with the mainstream society, there is nevertheless an invisible and impenetrable barrier to realization of the promise and dreams that spur immigration in the first place. That frustration is enough to turn a victim into a enraged killer, at least dramatically.

It takes a bit too long to tell this story and the pace does sag in the middle. But the acting is excellent, the music quite good, and the story line, while not entirely convincing, nevertheless manages to convey a serious social commentary.

Machete: Grade A

A
Machete (2010)

Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Steven Segal, Don Johnson, Robert De Niro, Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey, Lindsay Lohan; Co-writer and co-director Robert Rodriguez. (Spanish and English, with subtitles).

Trejo is Machete, a violent, machete-wielding, Mexican police officer, expert at decapitations, who was double-crossed by a drug lord (Segal). His wife is murdered before his eyes and he is beaten, stabbed, and left for dead in a burning building in Mexico. But like Bruce Willis in the Die-Hard series, Machete can’t really be killed, or even seriously injured. He survives and escapes to Texas as an illegal day laborer. There, a shady lawyer (Fahey) hires him to kill a U.S. Senator (DeNiro), but he is double-crossed on that deal too and again barely escapes with his life.

It turns out the senator is actually in the employ of the drug lord, manipulated by his chief of staff, and in cahoots with murderous border vigilantes. But Machete finds allies in “The Network,” an implausible group of legal and illegal Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who are ready for armed revolution, led by a young, attractive woman who runs a taco truck (Michelle Rodriquez), and from an equally unlikely ICE agent (Alba), working alone to track down The Network, then Machete, then the Minutemen, then the Senator’s aide, then the drug lord. After an hour and a half of nonstop knives, gore, cars, guns, and breasts, the world is made right again.

The violence is intentionally ludicrous, a comic form following Tarentino’s Kill Bill. (Rodriquez and Tarantino have collaborated in the past). This film alludes to the violent and vulgar exploitation movies of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, in the US and Australia, so there is the faux scratchy film stock and many of the same cinematic and dialogic conventions, but I don’t think this is supposed to be one of those films. This movie is very self-conscious, to the point of irony, about its violence, and even the vulgar language and gratuitous female nudity is comic-ironic. So I classify it as a comedy, despite its theme of blood and violence. The final gun battle should be proof enough of that, when a fleet of low-rider cars with jumping hydraulics attacks the bad guys’ fort. I think this movie is part of an emerging genre, the comedic, ironic slasher movie, “slashironcom”.

Besides great stunts, creative photography, and comedic violence, Machete also has a serious political message, namely that US immigration policy is ineffective, unfair, and small-minded, even though the US economically depends on illegal labor, and so immigration policy should be overhauled. It’s a message I happen to agree with, and although it is delivered with hyperbole, I’m glad to see it out there.

Casting is a notable feature of this movie. Trejo is a big, mean-looking, scar-faced tough guy, reminiscent of Mickey Rourke in some of his roles. That’s interesting. DeNiro may have been in the film for political reasons, but it is always a pleasure to see him. Alba and M. Rodriguez are easy on the eyes, but look too much alike to both be playing alpha females. Alba’s role however is courageous for her, and may be a career changer, from just another pretty face to someone with ideas and commitment. Segal is an unintentionally humorous self-parody, especially when he knife-fights Trejo. Lohan, in a tiny role, is so vacant that she evokes only sympathy. Cheech Marin is a standout as a priest who puts aside his vow of nonviolence. For viewers who are not freaked out by (fake) blood and unrelenting (fake) violence, this film is a pleasure, start to finish.

Crossing Over: Grade C

C
Crossing Over (2009)
Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Alice Shepard; Writer-Director Wayne Kramer.

Good plotting saves this familiar story of illegal immigrants trying to make a life in southern California. We’ve seen it all before: the immigrants are hard-working family people, but the nasty ICE keeps snooping around, deporting people, separating mothers from children, breaking up families, ruining lives, etc., etc. This edition of the story has a few variations that make it better than a mere rehash. Liotta is a crooked immigration bureaucrat who exchanges sex with a cute Aussie illegal (Shepard) for a green card; Ford is a way-past-retirement street officer who takes the trouble to return the child of a deported mom to the grandparents in Tijuana, and he also manages to solve a murder case involving an illegal muslim family. The film tries to represent the immigration authorities sympathetically. They are not uncaring bigots but sensitive officials and ordinary human beings just doing their jobs. It also tries to air brush the fact that the vast majority of immigrants to the US are Mexican. It does this by presenting a (non-random) “sample” of immigration stories including an Israeli, an Aussie, a Kenyan, a Korean family, and several Iranians, along with one Mexican family. However, Mexican immigrants constitute about 25% of all immigrants, while the next closest ethnic group is Chinese, at 5%. Why the film would attempt to distort these facts is unknown. Perhaps it was simply to introduce variety for entertainment value, but the political agenda of the movie suggests otherwise. Overall then, the film is mildly interesting with a bland but confused political message, some familiar actors but only mediocre acting and directing, and stereotypical characters. However clever mini-plots keep you just connected enough for its two-hour anthology of cases to be shown.

Dirty Pretty Things: Grade C

C
Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo; Director Stephen Frears;

The three main characters are illegal immigrants working at a fancy London hotel. Ejiofor’s character, the desk man, discovers that black market human organs are being traded at the hotel, and worse, the surgeries are being performed there also. Destitute immigrants trade kidneys for forged British passports and money. Being illegal, Ejiofor and his colleagues cannot go to the police. Meanwhile the immigration service is on everyone’s back trying to catch them working in the country illegally. There is good tension when they raid.

This movie is of the “Ain’t it Awful!” genre. Instead of relying on the main story line of the black market organs, or developing the lives of the characters, the movie focuses instead on the plight of illegal immigrants, the humiliations they must suffer, the long hours they must work, their poverty, oppression, exploitation, yada, yada; all while they hold their heads up high, pronounce high moral principles and fierce allegiance to their ethnicity. It is all too much. I get that illegal immigrants have a tough time. However, they are illegal, so what can they expect? It’s an old story and not particularly well retold. A movie like The Visitor does the topic much better.

Meanwhile, the organ market story is not explored in detail. There is a twisty penultimate scene that is satisfying, although the final ending is a melodramatic sapsucker. And I thought the sound engineering was poor: muddy dialog throughout. Acting by the principals is excellent however. I am a huge fan of Ejiofor, and enjoyed watching him, even though this is not his best performance. And who can resist Audrey Tatou’s trembling upper lip? Okenedo is magical, and it is a mystery in itself why we do not see more of her. So good acting redeems an otherwise substandard movie.

The Visitor: Grade A

A
The Visitor (2008)
Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbas; Writer-Director Thomas McCarthy.

An aging, burned out economics professor (Jenkins) leaves his home in Connecticut to visit his apartment in New York City. He finds a young couple (Sleiman and Gurira) living there illegally. The young man is an aspiring musician from Syria, a player of African drums, while she makes and sells beadwork of her native Senegal on the street. The professor politely asks them to leave and they politely leave, but he realizes they will be destitute and invites them back to share his (amazingly spacious) apartment for a while. Relationships are awkward but he develops a friendship with the young man, but alas, the ICE (immigration authorities) capture the young man. His mother (Abbas) appears at the professor’s door and the movie shifts to the slowly developing relationship between the professor and the mother as they try to get her son out of prison.

The acting by these four principal characters is nothing short of phenomenal. They are all utterly compelling, but Jenkins’ performance is astonishing. He says in a DVD interview, “I have been waiting all my professional life for this role.” It makes you wonder why he had to wait. Abbas also gives an outstanding performance, as does the director in portraying the quiet yet deep relationship that develops between the two older adults. The first half of the picture features the exuberance of the younger couple and conveys the multicultural world that is modern New York. The city is a star character in its own right, lovingly portrayed and beautifully photographed to unite the two halves of the movie. Writing and dialog seem authentic. I didn’t notice a single cliché in dialog, characterization, or photography.

This movie has the slow pace and subtle emotions of a serious foreign film. There are no guns, no drugs, no explosions, no sex, no violence, no stereotypes. It will not please most American moviegoers, but for the few who do enjoy a deeply meaningful study of modern human lives in development, it will be very rewarding.