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Reviewed by:
  • Hostile Border by Michael Dwyer, Kaitlin McLaughlin
  • Javier Ramirez (bio)
Hostile Border. Michael Dwyer and Kaitlin McLaughlin, 2015. Samuel Goldwyn Films. 88 mins.

It’s easy to characterize (and dismiss) Hostile Border as just another overly clichéd border crime thriller. The film’s narrative tells the story of Claudia (Veronica Sixtos), an undocumented immigrant whom the FBI arrests for credit card fraud. Faced with either prison time and then deportation or just deportation, Claudia reluctantly agrees to latter. Not surprisingly, Claudia speaks no Spanish and, having lived in the US since her early youth, is completely unfamiliar with her new home country. In Mexico, she is forced to take refuge at the cattle ranch of her estranged father (Julio César Cedillo). Andrés is less than enthusiastic to see Claudia and agrees to her staying only after his mother, Lita (María del Carmen Farías), insists upon it. The murder of Arturo (Jorge A. Jimenez), Andrés’s sole ranch hand, leads to an encounter with Ricky (Roberto Urbina), a charming, yet sadistic, Colombian drug smuggler who promises Claudia safe reentry into her adoptive country if she assists him in moving his product across Andrés’s land. What ensues is a tense, gritty portrayal of the immigrant experience and whether the American Dream is truly worth (illegally) pursuing.

Perhaps the most important element of Hostile Border comes at the beginning of the movie when we are introduced to the term pocha. Derived from the Spanish word pocho, which is used to describe a rotten fruit, pocha is slang for Mexican Americans who speak little to no Spanish or who speak only English. That the definition of pocha appears after a brief sequence of Claudia using stolen credit [End Page 221] cards and engaging in fraudulent activity with her mother, Inez (Sandra Santiago), speaks volumes to Claudia’s characterization as both an undocumented immigrant and Mexican American. Moreover, director Michael Dwyer and co-director Kaitlin McLaughlin initially titled their film Pocha. In an interview with IndieWire’s Carlos Aguilar, Dwyer explains: “To me that [pocha] captured the ambiguity that we were after, about somebody that’s stuck in between two cultures and difficult moral choices. When we went to the festivals they wanted an English title, so we wanted something that spoke to this idea of the distorted American dream that we wanted to show.”1 Dwyer and McLaughlin changed the title to Pocha: Manifest Destiny, but following the feedback they received from Samuel Goldwyn Films, their distributor, they decided on Hostile Border, a title they hoped would reach a wider (English and non-Spanish-speaking) audience.2

The difference between Hostile Border and Pocha is profound. While Hostile Border resonates with more popular portrayals of the southern border as violent, dangerous, and crime-infested space, Pocha tells the story of reverse immigration, that is, one that entails exploring the transformative journey of a young undocumented immigrant who, despite living in the US for most of her life, gets deported and must now survive in her new home country. Here, then, Veronica Sixtos’s outstanding performance as the independent, not-afraid-of-getting-her-hands-dirty Claudia challenges the stereotypical portrayals of women in border cinema. A poignant moment in the film comes when Claudia takes control of her own sexual pleasure and resists the assistance of the observing Ricky. Such a strong representation of a female protagonist differentiates Dwyer and McLaughlin’s brilliant film from, say, Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed Sicario (2015), an action-packed, big-budget Hollywood movie that features Emily Blunt playing the main female lead.

I would also add that President Trump’s decision in late 2017 to end the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) further underscores the importance of films like Hostile Border. Claudia’s status as an undocumented immigrant and her eventual deportation back to Mexico captures the plight (and reality) many DACA recipients suffer on an everyday basis. Understandably, Claudia’s criminal activity is the reason why she is deported. But her criminality—like her pocha status—does not define her, neither in the US nor in Mexico. Similarly, the (un)authorized status...

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