Border Incident ***½ (1949, Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva) – Classic Movie Review 5274

Director Anthony Mann’s 1949 film noir crime thriller lifts a mundane yarn about the law versus illegal Mexican immigrants by shooting it in a sharply realist fashion with John Alton’s noir-style black and white photography.

Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy do well as Pablo Rodriguez and Jack Bearnes, the Mexican and American federal immigration agents who link up to bust sinister Owen Parkson (Howard Da Silva)’s vicious immigrant-smuggling gang whose scam is to exploit illegal farm workers in southern California.

This entertaining adventure is just what it ideally should be – tense, taut and tough. It is just a shame about John C Higgins’s predictable screenplay, based on a story by him and George Zuckerman.

Also in the cast are James Mitchell, Alfonso Bedoya, Charles McGraw, Arthur Hunnicutt, Sig Ruman, Arnold Moss, José Torvay, John Ridgely, Otto Waldis and Teresa Celli.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5274

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