Mark Reviews Movies: NO MAN'S LAND (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 21, 2021

A family of ranchers in Texas and a group of migrants from Mexico collide at the end of the first act of No Man's Land. When it happens, we have a basic idea of the relationships involved on both sides—fathers and sons, primarily. Once the confrontation ends, leaving a boy on one side dead and a young man on the other seriously wounded, co-writer/star Jake Allyn and David Barraza's screenplay has little time, patience, or understanding for the more obviously wronged party in the conflict.

That's not necessarily a flaw for this kind of story, which is mostly about guilt and also about an extended chase. In the aftermath of the violence near the U.S.-Mexico border, Jackson Greer (Allyn), a rancher with the potential to become a professional baseball player, is on the run from the law, the father of the dead boy, a gangster looking to help the father for unknown reasons, and his own conscience.

That's a possibly promising premise, for sure, although it fails in two regards. First, it abandons the notion of looking at the migrants with as much sympathy as the ranchers. Second, Jackson turns out to be a pretty bland and boring hero, a strange combination of relative privilege, ignorant naïveté, entitled cowardice, and an ostensibly noble heart, trying to do the absolute least he can do under the circumstances to help the mourning father—although it really just seems as if he's trying to clear his conscience before hoping to get back to his normal life.

There's a decided lack of balance here that's impossible to ignore. It's clear that Allyn, Barraza, and director Conor Allyn (the screenwriter/star's brother) have some good intentions, as their on-the-lam, guilt-ridden, and inexperienced-with-the-world protagonist learns some lessons about the ways and people on the other side of the border. Are those lessons, though, really worth the cost of a devastated man and a shattered family? When one of those lessons—treated with plain-faced sincerity—is Jackson realizing that Mexico is bigger than he imagined, it's difficult to argue that his education is worth the price.

Jackson and his family—father Bill (Frank Grillo), mother Monica (Andie MacDowell), and brother Lucas (Alex MacNicoll)—live in the so-called "no man's land," an area in Texas between the Rio Grande and the U.S. border fence. For decades, migrants from Mexico have crossed into the United States in the region, but lately, Bill has become more cynical about the situation—with all the guns, drugs, cartels, etc.

One recent group cuts through a fence on the ranch, scattering the family's cattle. Late in the night, Bill and Lucas go looking for anyone trying to cross through their property. Jackson disobeys his father, who wants his son safe for his sporting prospects, and arrives just in time to see the two men stopping Gustavo (Jorge A. Jimenez), who's escorting a group—including his young son, with whom the father has a brief heart-to-heart, and mother—into the United States. There's a scuffle, resulting in Lucas being shot and Jackson taking a shot, unintentionally killing Gustavo's son.

From here, there's a brief moment in which Bill tries to take responsibility for the boy's death with a local Texas Ranger (played by George Lopez), but the naïve Jackson ruins that scheme and has to run from the law, crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico. Meanwhile, Gustavo, a decent man and legal immigrant (which is important for the movie to note, as if the filmmakers believe that distinction makes him more worthy of compassion), decides to take justice into his own hands, and Luis (Andrés Delgado), a ruthless coyote, offers to help.

To be clear, Gustavo, a religious man whose faith is tested by his fight for good leading to so much pain, is instantly a more fascinating character than anyone else in this story. The movie, though, simply turns him into nothing more than a single-minded antagonist, following Jackson's trail and, at one point, even threatening a woman and her son in order to get information on his target (A movie that cared about this character would examine this obvious betrayal of his values, but this one just uses the moment to raise the stakes of Gustavo's hunt).

Jackson wanders the desert, fights Luis, finds some work at a ranch, and spends most of the third act trying to evade and escape from the grieving father, the violent coyote, and the dedicated lawman. We know he feels guilt about what he did, because he's haunted by nightmares and visions of the dead boy, while carrying the child's wallet with him. There really isn't much, then, to Jackson or to Allyn's performance, which constantly forces us to wonder what the filmmakers saw in the plight of this character that made him more worthy of focus than almost anyone else in this story.

No Man's Land establishes a somewhat intriguing dichotomy of families affected by the legal and political complications of immigration, but the movie's eventual aims, morals, and attempts at catharsis ring hollow. In the end, a guy with nothing to gain and little to lose feels better about himself, and that, apparently, is what really matters.

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