[yasr_overall_rating]
A new sheriff of a small town along the U.S. & Mexico border investigates a drug cartel deal that went horribly wrong.
The American Southwest, long overlooked by popular culture other than semi-mythical portrayals of urban California and Midland Texas, is finally getting its due. The residents of the borderlands that join the Anglo-centric culture of the United States with the hispanohablante one of Mexico – defined in Colin Woodard’s book ‘Eleven American Nations’ as a regional subculture called “El Norte” – are finally being treated as valid participants in the American experience. “Breaking Bad,” set in Albuquerque, was one of the first Southwestern-centric productions to make judicious use of its setting. The groundbreaking series was not confined to areas that every viewer would be familiar with, but instead accurately depicted the stunning complexity of the modern Southwest with its joining of two distinct cultures and its massive class disparity between landowning elites and a multiracial underclass, all pulled into the vortex of the drug war. It is from this environment that “The Hollow Point” draws its strength.
“The Hollow Point” is difficult to describe. It is a visceral crime thriller that blends elements of Western, gothic, and noir genres. The film takes place in a small town that sits on the edge of Texas’ border with Mexico, and finds itself unexpectedly caught up in a drug cartel deal that fell apart violently and has deep ramifications. New sheriff Wallace (Patrick Wilson) takes it upon himself to unweave the tangled web of deceit and skullduggery. Ian McShane appears as the disgraced former sheriff Leland, who unceremoniously liquidates a criminal in the film’s opening minutes with a shot to the head. McShane is, in my view, a perpetually underrated actor. He excels at playing antiheroes or sympathetic villains – in the past, he has called them “complicated characters” – and “The Hollow Point” provided him a terrific chance to essentially re-up his popular “Deadwood” character, Al Swearingen. Together, the two form an unlikely duo that sets about to bring old school Western justice to a struggling 21st century town.
The best part of the film, bar none, is its gritty and preternatural environment. Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego seems to have pioneered a sort of “Southwestern gothic” genre that does not really have an equivalent. For this, he deserves platitudes, as the dark backdrop makes “The Hollow Point” a memorable experience. McShane delivers as former sheriff Leland (though he is not quite as believable in this role as he has been in past ones) and Wilson was the perfect choice for the white hat sheriff Wallace. However, I found the plot to be needlessly complicated. There are too many characters with too many different agendas that are thrown at the audience far too quickly. In many cases, a character’s relevance to the film was difficult to suss out or was not revealed until much too late in the game. This is a shame, because taken by themselves, many of the characters are quite wonderful: violent villains, intrepid sheriffs, struggling townspeople, crooked businessmen. It is their attempted joining as component parts that falls flat and prevents “The Hollow Point” from realizing its full potential.
While I was a bit disappointed that this production was not as enjoyable as it could have been, its positive attributes far outweigh its negative ones. I would gladly revisit Lopez-Gallego’s Texas-Mexico hinterlands anytime, and look forward to his future offerings. Despite the unnecessary complexity of the plot thread, the wild ruckus that “The Hollow Point” throws us into is quite engaging. In addition, the film is appropriately topical, with debates over immigration and border security gripping American political life. Crime films seem to occupy a special place in the pantheon of cinematic greatness; while “The Hollow Point” does not quite reach the great heights set by some of its predecessors, it is a worthy addition to the genre nonetheless.
In theaters December 16th
