MonsterHunter

Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity) and Claire Trevor both play undercover agents who go down to Mexico to infiltrate a drug smuggling operation. They arrive separately and unaware of one another’s occupation as drug agents. Of course, they are thrust together and each one thinks the other is a criminal and each one is determined to bring the other in without letting on that he/she is an undercover agent. Along the way they manage to fall in love which only serves to complicate things just long enough to stretch this potboiler out to a robust 88 minutes.

Despite appearances and how it’s sometimes sold, Borderline is not a film noir let alone a film noir classic. It’s always dangerous to try and define a term like “film noir”, but this doesn’t fit any definition of film noir I’ve ever encountered. The best film noir posits a degree of alienation from things. It was a metaphor for postwar readjustment returning soldiers often had to contend with. It was about trying to fit in to the regular world again. The characters in these noir movies either don’t fit in, can’t fit in, or have simply given up trying.

Another aspect of those films is the inevitability of doom that permeates things. The tragic end that befalls most of these characters is predetermined and unavoidable, but it is the struggle these people put up before falling to destiny that is instructive and entertaining. Borderline simply doesn’t fit into any of this. Just because your movie is black and white and about crime and was made in 1950 does not automatically qualify your flick as a “film noir classic.”

Truth be told, this movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. Sometimes it’s one of those tough-talking-pistol-whipping-let-go-of-my-dame movies. Other times it thinks it wants to try its hand at comedy. You know the kind of comedy. The kind where these two people like each other but are always bickering and making wise with each other. The kind where if it isn’t just right you sit there wishing everyone involved would get pistol whipped.

With the last half of the movie it becomes kind of a road picture with the two leads trying to get back up to the U.S. border and encountering all kinds of trouble. The result is a strange hybrid that is ugly in the way Frankenstein’s monster was ugly - you could see the stitches and nuts and bolts holding all the disparate parts together. Also like with Frankenstein’s monster, I was ready to form an angry mob and storm my TV with torches and pitchforks about 13 minutes in.

Raymond Burr is in this film as a bad guy. You know he’s a bad guy because he’s a fat guy in a white suit. Never in my life have I seen a fat guy in a white suit that didn’t have some sort of nefarious scheme hatching beneath his double-breasted coat. So periodically Burr shows up and just glowers and spews tough guy talk about how MacMurray will not always be lucky and the like.

Apparently Burr is some sort of drug kingpin that MacMurray screws out of some shipments by working with another guy that I guess MacMurray thought was a good guy but turned out to be a bad guy. So Burr is tracking Fred all over Mexico trying to get even with him. All the time I’m thinking, “how can you not see this fat dude in the giant white suit coming a mile away in the hot Mexican badlands? Come to think of it, how could you not smell him?

Fred MacMurray is the only bright spot in this film. He’s actually pretty good chewing on his periodically hardboiled dialogue and is one of those stars that add a degree of craftsmanship to whatever project he’s in. The female lead, Claire Trevor, just couldn’t seem to get it done in this film. She may have won an Oscar for Supporting Actress in Key Largo , but this movie is not Key Largo and she’s not the supporting actress here.

She and MacMurray have zero chemistry which leaves their witless banter twice as deadly. They seem to hate each other through a good portion of the movie until they suddenly kiss and from there on out its Fred and Claire sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. There is of course a dash of angst, as both of them fret over having to turn the other in to the cops once they get back home.

It all gets straightened out in an idiotic scene where her superior shows up and apparently knows them both or something. It’s movies like this that goes to show you that Hollywood was just as capable of stinking up the joint 50 years ago as they are today.

© 2008 MonsterHunter