Hell on the Border

What a terrible movie. I was disappointed after watching it to find that Bruce Willis, Nicholas Cage or Steven Seagal weren't in it as they are the Trilogy of Bad Movie Actors.

Yo Donnie(ron Perlman) wtf where you thinkin? Not the worsr Film of the year bur bad. Sound made it unwatchable

As an introductory Bass Reeves adventure, kicking off the career of the historical figure and serving up some solid Western gunslinging in the process, I thought this was great. I was actually pleasantly surprised to learn this was a Bass Reeves movie and that it was pretty well-done. I can't speak to the historicity of it: I only know Bass Reeves' storied career in outline. I *do* know that it's only an introduction of the character and the beginning of his career, though, and that it's clearly conceived as the beginning of a series, so I personally would discount reviews that are damning it for not conveying the full historical breadth of Reeves' character and accomplishments as being irrelevant. Did Reeves have to fight through prejudice to get his star? I do not know. I *do* know that it feels evocative of the waning era of Reconstruction, that the inclusion of a group of Kansas exodusters is on-point for the time, that the actors do fine work with the material (including the villain), and that all the basic beats of the early stages of the Reeves story are here. If some of it is fictionalized, I'm not too fussed: the fiction hangs together and makes for a fun Western adventure story and we get plenty of excellent gunslinging action. I was surprised to find all the negative reviews here, honestly. It's a competent Western, not *particularly* spectacular but certainly fun and captivating, and I hope the further entries in the series they clearly envisioned actually happen. If they do, I'll seek them out.

The background score completely screwed this film up, I couldn't hear dialogues in parts cause the music overpowers it, QC there Netflix???

Of course this could have been better, but I enjoyed the story and it inspired me to research Bass Reeves

Given that African Americans haven't been represented well in the western film genre despite in real life having a big impact during the days of the wild west, I was really interested in seeing this movie, especially since it was based on a real African American lawman (Bass Reeves). But whatever your ethnicity may be, I am pretty sure that you will find this movie to be simply terrible. The portrayal of Bass Reeves here is extremely unsatisfying. About all that the movie can think of to do with this character is for him to regularly meet people who are racist and/or doubtful he can do the job, and brood silently about it. If they had really explored this character deeply, I'm sure things would have been better. However, even if great effort had been made to portray Bass Reeves in a multidimensional manner, the movie would still have been pretty awful. Right from the start, viewers will see that the movie did not have much of a budget - cinematography looks almost like VHS quality, the locations are drab and boring, there's not much in the way of props, the costumes look too clean and too new, and the sets are really flimsy and cheap. Probably due to this pittance of a budget, the filmmakers didn't seem able to put in a lot of spectacle. The movie is really slow-moving, with a lot of (cliched) dialogue instead of action and a swift pace. I'm sure the filmmakers had their heart in the right place, but the end results indicate that they should have waited to get a bigger budget (and a better script) before filming started. As it is, it's yet another Lions Gate / Grindstone production that's way below par.

This truly is amateur hour. Clearly there is a story worth telling and, at times, you feel there is a good film struggling to get out but it is totally prevented from doing so by the sheer incompetence of most everyone involved. I thought the presence of the great Ron Perlman might be a guarantee of some level of quality, but he just phones his performance in - long distance! You know you're in trouble when you spot a really bad edit in the first five minutes, then in the first shoot out there is some truly risible edits as the director tries to recreate the tension of a Sergio Leone gun fight - but fails so miserably! By this time the film is starting to look like it was a primary school project that just went wrong. And, let's face it, I should have guessed from the title...it's just pants. I was allowing myself to be led by my nostalgia for that truly great western series - 'Hell on Wheels'. Obviously the producers were looking to try and cash in on a spurious connection. But the worst thing of all is the music, the constant and utterly dreadful incidental music. Except it's not that incidental, it pretty much drowns everything else out. Why film and TV makers feel that it is necessary to have music all the way through beats me. Trying to guide us what to think and, truth be known, to cover up some ropey plots and dialogue. This was about as bad as it gets. Whoever was responsible (and I really can't be bothered to look up the name) should meet the fate of many of the main characters adverseries...but with better editing! Avoid - you'll never get that 1 hour 50 minutes of your life back.

Loved every minute of it!! Always enjoy seeing bass and ron <3

This was an insult to the true story. The acting was almost comical at times. Nothing about this project was given any professional courtesy.

Where to start with the issues? Buildings with beautifully fresh and smoothly sawn walls, houses with aluminium roofs, six shooters that didn't need reloading, disjointed action sequences moving at glacial speeds...... Camerawork was crude, used jerkiness and lens flare etc to no benefit. One of the worst films I've seen in the last year, this was inconsistent, uneven, unrealistic and frankly has nothing to commend it except that it chose a story that should be told. Avoid.