Border Incident 1949 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (95 minutes) directed by Anthony Mann, includes a kibitz version featuring film historian Dana Polan commenting as the film runs.
A group of illegal immigrants robbed and murdered on the United States-Mexico border—the ‘border incident’ of the title—prompts the U.S. Department of Justice and the Policía Judicial Federal, the former Mexican federal police agency, to investigate a pattern of such crimes.
The agencies task Capitán Pablo Rodriguez (Ricardo Montalban) and Inspector Jack Bearnes (George Murphy), agents who worked together before, to investigate human trafficking on the U.S.-Mexican border, operating through a U.S. field office in Calexico, California.
The movie emphasizes U.S.-Mexican ‘Good Neighbor’ cooperation, its tone is earnest and a voiceover tells viewers that the fictional story is based on actual case files. But what follows is a gripping action story: Rodriguez turns up in the rough border town Mexicali, Mexico, working undercover as a bracero, or laborer, trying to cross the border illegally, with Bearnes tracing his steps and working an American angle, together to crack a well-organized and dangerous ring of American human traffickers.
The Mexican bad guys tend to run to a stereotype. Cuchillo (Alfonso Bedoya), one of the coyotes, is the Mexican character actor who as Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre immortalized the line “I don't have to show you any stinking badges.” But the Mexican workers are portrayed with an earnest respect. The American bad guys, lead by rancher Owen Parson (Howard Da Silva), range from Da Silva’s suave sociopath who calmly plunks plastic pigeons in his office with a pellet pistol, to dangerous, order-following bullies.
Because much of the action takes place at night, a lot of the film was shot day-for-night (shot during daylight hours using camera filters to give the print the appearance of having been filmed at night), which occasionally lends the film a shade more mystery than necessary.
Nevertheless, this is tight, a well-made B-picture on an issue every bit as pressing to this day.
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