PWNYCNY Those believing that the illegal immigration into the United States is a new issue only need to watch this movie to refute that belief. This movie dramatizes the problem of illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico. This movie candidly those economic and social factors which contribute to the problem and why some choose to circumvent the law in order to sneak into the United States. Those who do sneak in of course do so at great risk, yet for some the risks are worth it because of the desperate need to make money. Dealing with this problem is especially challenging and risky for law enforcement, as this movie shows. The story is presented in semi-documentary form which gives it a feeling of authenticity which further adds to the movie's dramatic power. Watch this movie.

bkoganbing Illegal immigration is an issue this country is still trying to get a handle on. We say we don't like it, but we sure like the idea of illegals coming to work here for poverty wages. But now as in 1949 there will be people looking to exploit the situation in Mexico and in America and films like Border Incident will strike way too close to our patriotic hearts.Border Incident tells the story of an American Immigration Officer and a Mexican Federale. Both George Murphy and Ricardo Montalban go undercover to smoke out an organized people smuggling ring, Murphy as a convict with illegal stolen immigration work forms and Montalban as a migrant worker. Working in border towns on both sides of the Mexican-California border, Murphy and Montalban work in a non-stop atmosphere of intrigue and deceit. They are working separately, but know each other is on the case and the problem is there really is no one either can trust. Anthony Mann does a beautiful job in creating the tension involved in such an operation as director.Noir films were not usually what MGM put out, but in the case of Border Incident, they put out a real good one.

tom-day /Border Incident/ is successful both as a tale and as a window into 1949.The drama takes us to unusual places and situations. It has a fine range of characters. Following the number one good guy, we visit Calexico, California, a border town, we follow a truckload of illegal workers, and in their barracks we see them ponder their low pay and abusive treatment. Following the number two good guy, we see the world of deals in fake ids, management of the flow of illegals, and, ta daaa, a ring of thieves that kills illegals returning to Mexico for the wad of bills each has in his pocket.The opening exposition is straightforward, almost pedestrian. Typically 1949. Once the stage is set, "BI" changes from documentary to drama, moving forward like a play.It bothered me that the number one good guy, (Ricardo Montalban), sometimes goes out of character to augment the exposition. Would a government agent, undercover as a bracero, speak up when one of his group needs medical attention? Hardly. Would he be the one to politicize the workers in the bunkhouse? Hardly. More likely he'd keep his head down and his mouth shut. Still, the lines get delivered; the audience gets to hear them. Not ideal, but it works. As a drama I rate it: five stars.As a window on the past, Border Incident is quite fascinating. They didn't have cell phones! Both governments were against the illegal flow of workers! Ah, the good old days. NAFTA had not displaced a flood of subsistence farmers. The Mexican government had not published the infamous "Guide For The Mexican Migrant", the pamphlet which helps one cross illegally (take lots of water) and live in the US inconspicuously (avoid domestic violence -- picture of a man slugging his wife).In 1949, according to BI, US law enforcement officers were honorable people who made an honest effort to do their jobs! Mexican, the same! The cynicism (realism?) of 2009 is not present. Plenty of food for thought in the time travel aspect of Border Incident. Eight stars.Overall, 6 stars.

carvalheiro "Border incident" (1949) directed by Anthony Mann remains surely as movie in your remembrance, namely of the all people whose bad conscience is concerning immigration and illegal papers for working in a foreign market. As though since then in where the local bosses agree nowadays as before yesterday, with such a low costs for the labor and importation of human flesh, as also parallel circuits of exploitation from Mexicans. Finally, in why with some of them on the spot there are as a fact that shows us how the myth of liberty is only for other mentality of equality of opportunities. The only thing that is perhaps somewhat out of the time in this movie is the manner by which works Mann's style for introducing the sensuality of the two women of the story - apart the young widow with angelic face and the witch reading the hand - in small roles inside a masculine environment : one is a Mexican beautiful employee of the boss half corrupted or prostitute at his service, the other is also a beauty whom the young Mexican invades the flat to call the police by her phone without waiting for her permission, but which took another way when she cut the link and points her pistol to him, calling the husband who works with the illegal immigration. Anthony Mann courageously at a given time that it was not surely very well seen on screening, by the feelings like such were in this matter, wins still our sensibility to change the dust from the border stand of trade for human beings, like in the recent past slaves inside clandestine vans and shootings like if it was the same as against coyotes. There are six deaths : an old man who had the last breath before our eyes inside a clandestine van and whose corpse is thrown away in the evening through the sands and slopes of the no man's land without being even buried like a Indian as well in the past, an intruder killed by a caterpillar because he was in the net of the illegal immigration which took nine of the fifteen dollars promised to each one working for Arizona land owners, a racist driver of a van for whom the immigrants like that are like monkeys, another campaigner against the net who is killed in an ambush by night, the boss of the both sides who was killed by his own employee during a cross fire by night in the desert and one of the mustaches of the ridicule crooks.As almost a documentary in certain moments, this movie actually brings the old problem of illegal immigration from Mexico to United States. As it was since then an unsolved nightmare of the offer from a free strength of labor to the economics of the consumption market from the food industries, much more competitive crossing a fragile border, that means more corruption and killings. In one of the scenes it's watched, in a given office of a powerful man of the region, a lighter imitating a pistol, like in an old far-west movie with characters that are the caricatured misery of themselves, as displaced in a kind of mental no man's land.