A US Border Patrol agent becomes involved in a cover-up, only to find
he's dealing with strange forces.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lance Larson
Starring: Roberto Urbina, McCaul Lombardi, Julieth Restrepo, Kendal Rae, Luis
Chavez, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Manuel Uriza, Chris Mulkey, Chris White, Dave
Maldonado
Some filmmakers bang out an acclaimed short and are immediately
afforded the chance to direct a feature. Such cases are rare however,
and for most it's a long slog. Lance Larson directed his first
short as far back as 1999 and has only now made his feature debut. I'm
glad Larson stayed on what was no doubt an often frustrating path, as
Deadland, which he co-wrote with Jas Shelton, suggests he's an exciting
talent.
With its sweaty American SouthWest setting and Border Patrol
protagonists, Deadland recalls 1980s thrillers like
The Border
and Flashpoint, but it's also a ghost story, a tale of fathers, sons and (un?)holy
spirits.
A routine call leads half American, half Mexican Border Patrol agent
Angel Waters (Roberto Urbina) to a narrow but treacherous stretch
of the Rio Grande known to be a crossing point for Mexican migrants.
There he finds one such migrant (Luis Chávez) attempting the
deadly crossing. Despite Angel's shouted warnings, the man persists in
trying to cross and is swept downstream. By the time Angel reaches him
he appears to have drowned, which makes for a hell of a surprise when he
emerges from a body bag in the back of Angel's 4x4. The migrant whispers
a plea to be brought to El Paso, but Angel takes him to a remote Border
Patrol outpost and leaves him in the hands of two of his colleagues –
xenophobic loose cannon Ray (McCaul Lombardi) and by-the-book
Salomé (Julieth Restrepo).
Angel heads home and finds his pregnant wife, nurse Hannah (Kendal Rae), has let an elderly stranger into their home. The bedraggled man,
Ignacio (Manual Uriza), claims to be Angel's long lost father,
and is carrying a photo of Angel's mother. He mumbles what seems to be
nonsensical homilies about trees and roots, which Angel refuses to pay
attention to. Angel wants nothing to do with the man, even, or perhaps
especially if he really is his father, but the kindly Hannah talks him
into allowing him to stay awhile. When Angel receives a phone call from
Salomé, his world is instantly turned upside down.
It's difficult to say any more about where this leads without ruining
some neat twists and turns, but suffice to say it evolves into a tense
thriller with supernatural elements. Angel allows himself to compromise
his position for the sake of his co-workers, and the three commit an act
that's both immoral and unprofessional. When a pair of Internal Affairs
officers (Chris Mulkey, Julio Cesar Cedillo) arrive in town
looking for Ignacio, whom they claim fled a nearby institution, it leads
Salomé and Ray to grow increasingly paranoid about whether Angel really
has their back or if he might grass them to save his own skin. What they
don't realise is that Angel now has two major worries – covering up his
colleague's deed and hiding Ignacio from IA and ICE.
Deadland is the sort of movie you watch and immediately
think "I didn't think they made them like that anymore." It depends who
"they" are. If "they" is Hollywood, then yes, they don't. While a movie
like Deadland would have been a wide release 30-40 years
ago, perhaps even as recent as the late 2000s when the likes of
No Country for Old Men could play to large crowds, now
such movies disappear into the VOD void, reliant on the likes of yours
truly to drum up interest. It really does feel like a product of a past
era though, a genre piece populated by three-dimensional characters and
with twists and turns that keep you on the edge without getting in the
way of tension and suspense. Larson has a classical, unshowy style of
direction that harks back to the heyday of John Carpenter and Walter
Hill – his camera is always in the right place but never draws attention
to itself.
This style of filmmaking allows the viewer to focus on what really
drives movies – actors. Even in a 1980s genre classic like
The Thing that's filled with outlandish set-pieces, it's
the performances and characters that stick in your mind. That's the case
here, as despite how small their roles are, everyone on screen feels
like someone who has lived a full life before the camera began rolling.
Like their director, much of the cast have put in a lot of time in small
roles in movies and TV shows on both sides of the Mexican-American
border, and you get a real sense of a group of actors seizing a chance
to finally become stars. Urbina, Restrepo, Rae and Lombardi are all new
to me, but watching them inhabit their characters I felt like I was
watching well-established movie stars. Veteran Mulkey is so good here as
a sinister shit-eating IA agent that it may kick off the sort of
late-career revival his Twin Peaks co-star Michael Parks
enjoyed prior to his passing in 2017.
Slap a Ry Cooder score on the soundtrack and edit out the smartphones
and you have a movie that feels like a timeless gem. But there's
something very modern about its underlying themes of identity. Raised by
his white mother in his Mexican father's absence, you get the impression
Angel took the job of Border Patrol as an act of vengeance against the
father he never knew. The Mexican Salomé's assiduous approach to her job
seems motivated by a feeling that she has to constantly prove which side
of the fence she's on, something manipulated by Mulkey's IA agent. The
closing scenes, in which the supernatural sub-plot is skilfully brought
to the fore in a manner that never detracts from the general air of
gritty realism, suggests that America's migrant community may always be
haunted by roots they can't escape.
Deadland is on UK/ROI VOD from
June 24th.