People are voting emotionally.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

No actress played "Cheap Broad" better than Claire Trevor. She is the high point in this film. In this film she is a high class dame pretending to be a "cheap Broad", and she manages to do with with little to no help from the script. Fred MacMurray plays a character who is both a romantic lead, and an apparent bad guy. His character is radically different from the character he played on "my Three Sons".Raymond Burr plays a very convincing villain. His character is also very different from the character he played on "Perry Mason".The weak point in this film is "Mexico", or at least Hollywood's concept of Mexico in 1950. The location shots are actually filmed in the Greater Los Angeles area - in areas which look nothing at all like Baja California.This film also is very contrary in its portrayal of Latino characters - especially Latinas. Many of the characters are not people but rather cartoon-ish characters.

Hold on, let me get this straight - Maddy Haley/Gladys Larue (Claire Trevor) goes undercover as a drug agent, gets mistaken for a crime lord's moll, shoots the bad guy (Raymond Burr), gets kidnapped by another undercover cop (Fred MacMurray) posing as a drug dealer, and winds up with said cop in a sleazy Mexican hotel room! Not knowing each other's true identity, why didn't Haley just beat it the first chance she got? It didn't make any sense to me. Oh yeah, and later on, she still had her gun! Huh? Well I guess you just weren't supposed to think about stories like this too much. This one started out like it could have been a noir style crime drama, but veered into questionable comedic territory before dissolving into something that didn't quite work on either level. Probably the goofiest part of the story occurred early when Trevor's character tried to catch Pete Ritchie's (Burr) eye and he wasn't going for it. Wouldn't you say she was a bit over the top in trying to get his attention? Wouldn't it make YOU suspicious?Anyway, all is not lost. If you take your thinking cap off this doesn't have to be so bad. I thought the switcheroo involving the dead Mexican driver Miguel and a local town drunk was a hoot. It seemed a little callous of MacMurray's character, but by that time he probably figured he couldn't fight the script and just went with it. Too bad the chemistry with Trevor didn't really click because this could have been a little bit better than it turned out. In fact, just like the plane in the middle of the story, this one wound up simply running out of gas.

This is a perfectly adequate movie with perfectly adequate performances and while there's nothing bad about this film, there certainly isn't anything that good that stands out either. This film sort of like a "Film Noir-LITE", in that it has some of the outward signs of a Noir film (such as gangsters, villains and violence) but is far from a good example of the genre (mediocre camera-work and rather listless dialog compared to "true" Noir). And, despite starring Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor, I really had to struggle to keep watching the film because nothing peaked my interest. Plus, even though the film co-starred Raymond Burr (one of the greatest Noir actors of all-time--especially in RAW DEAL), he wasn't given that much screen time (his removal from the plot was way too easy and anti-climactic) and his usual sadism was absent. In many ways, I consider this film to be like eating meatloaf--it's pretty ordinary, inoffensive and nothing to get excited over. Gimme a "steak" anytime over meatloaf!

"Borderline" tries to be a lot of things. Romantic comedy, film noir, comedy of errors, gangster film, and more. Unfortunately it does not succeed at any of these genres.Led by Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor, who have absolutely no chemistry together, this film suffers from an identity crisis.Film starts out on a serious note, story about drugs being smuggled over the border. Then Claire Trevor acts as though she thinks she's in "Hellzapoppin'". Broad, over the top, and just not right for the part. From there we meet Fred MacMurray who is only slightly more interesting.Yes, there are some humorous moments, but nowhere near enough to be able to recommend seeing this film.5 out of 10