British director Alex Cox has made a number of interesting films, including the cult classic Repo Man, although after the critical success of pseudo biopic Sid & Nancy, his reputation tanked with Walker, and he has mostly been relegated to low-budget projects with unknown actors. The critical reception to Walker might have been unfair, since it appears that he was aiming for a way to critique American imperialism in Central America before the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and back to Central America during the Reagan administration; yes, if there is anyone to blame for the influx of migrants, the U.S. shares it with its destructive economic, political and social machinations in those countries for almost 200 years.
Cox would have been better off if he had made a film that was a straight forward history of William Walker’s activities in Nicaragua; he even persuaded an A-list actor, Ed Harris, to play the lead role. Cox made the mistake of assuming that Americans know their history about their less-than-good neighborliness in the countries south of the border. No, most are like racist nativists like South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, mired in ignorance and who must “prove” their far-right “cred” by beating on those most vulnerable to their hate.
The reality is that almost every
white, black or Asian person in this country knows absolutely nothing about it—no
thanks to the media; they only know their own self-absorbtion, or complaints about problems
on the border and immigration in general that effects them not at all, but is still a useful "object" to beat on when in need of something to work out their frustrations on. The Latino community, on the other hand, continues to suffer from division, largely along racial lines and the "I'm not one of them" syndrome.
Walker should have been a film that kept to the historical facts, instead of trying to be “artistic,” since all that did was confuse the matter and render it fanciful and not credible. That is not to say that Walker doesn’t have any merit; “Ugly Americanism” permeates throughout, and American “ideals” are revealed to be of the highest form of hypocrisy when applied to other countries.
Cox made amends with his 1991 film Highway Patrolman, released on Blu-ray/DVD by Kino Lorber, a film shot in Mexico with Mexican actors and done entirely in Spanish, and based on the experiences of one of the film’s actors who did serve as a patrolman. Unlike Walker, this film is uncompromising in its realism in portraying an initially idealistic rookie patrolman, Pedro Rojas (Roberto Sosa) who by nature is a decent, good-hearted young man who must “grow up” quickly in order to survive in that world.
Highway Patrolman evolves in a believable way, showing how Pedro learns survival skills while still managing to keep a semblance of his prior humanity—he and the people he deals with on a daily basis are human beings who have the same needs and desires as the rest of the human race: they are not the “animals” or “infestation” that at least half this country and the media thinks they are. They just live in a world where stronger outside forces are beyond their control (mainly the free flow of guns from “el Norte” and its addiction to illegal drugs), and must adapt.
The film begins with Pedro at a police academy, but since he is one of the better students he is plucked out of his advanced classes by a highway patrol instructor. Pedro is concerned that this will hurt his grades, but he is informed to be silent and do what he is told.
He is seen driving through an obstacle course, and instructed on how everyone they stop on the highway has broken a law; their job is to come up with a reason by the time they reach the driver of the vehicle they pulled over. It’s the same thing in this country when a cop pulls over random people—usually minorities—to find out if they have a “warrant,” and like in Mexico, it is a traffic ticket “racket.”
Pedro graduates from the highway patrol training, and is assigned to an “easy” route and a refurbished patrol car His first “stop” is a blonde woman who is driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. She bursts into tears, claiming that she is late for work and her boss might fire her, which can be seen by her histrionics to be a clearly a made-up story. Because of his good nature Pedro is easily flustered and confuse, and lets the woman go with a warning.
We see that Pedro is an “idealist” who believes that what he is doing is serving the community, which is confirmed when he stops at a roadside church to pray to the Virgin Mary and help him do the right things:
On one patrol, he stops a truck, using as an excuse that it is missing its front bumper is missing. The driver is transporting smuggled toys, clothing and sporting equipment, which Pedro impounds and is later seen with his friend and fellow patrolman Anibal (Bruno Bichir), distributing some of it to the children of a local orphanage. The next morning he pulls over a truck with farmworkers in the back, which is apparently illegal because trucks are not transportation vehicles. After a discussion on the matter with the driver, Griselda (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez), Pedro agrees to overlook the issue in exchange for an invitation to breakfast at her home.
This initiates their courtship, which necessarily requires the presence of Griselda’s father to check Pedro out.
It doesn’t take long before they are married. But he doesn’t make enough money as a patrolman, so she still drives farmworkers around. Pedro is called in to see his supervisor, and is told that since he has not fulfilled his “quota” for tickets on the “easy” route which Anibal has had no problem doing, he is being transferred to the “pig route.” Here Pedro tells a pig farmer that he must have a health certificate to transport his animals, which the farmer complains is too much “red tape.” Pedro doesn’t care how the “system” worked in the past, which the farmer demonstrates by giving him an envelope of money for the police retirement fund. He mistakes the reason for Pedro’s insistence that he must have the proper documents by putting another envelope on the table, complaining that every new patrolman demands more money. Pedro stamps his permit, succumbing not to temptation but because he is starting to realize he can’t beat the “system” by simply being a good cop.
Becoming increasingly disillusioned with his job, he stops one night at a bar that doubles as a whorehouse, gets drunk and winds in the bed of Maribel (Vanessa Bauche).
He tries to sneak back home, but Griselda is waiting for him:
But she comes around when he gives her a wad of cash from the payoffs he has accumulated; she’s been wondering when he was going start “making some money” from his job, since “everyone” knows that Mexican police take money under the table, and she’s not asking questions about where it comes from; after all, she did the same thing with him during their first meeting.
One day Pedro is investigating a serious traffic accident when a yellow Gremlin or Bobcat without a license plate speeds through the accident scene, and he gives chase. Unfortunately the passenger of the car shows him his “license”—a handgun which he uses to shoot Pedro in the knee. This is the first time that Pedro has not only encountered a real criminal who didn’t respect the authority of police, but one who thought it was “fun” to shoot an unsuspecting officer.
For the rest of the film, Pedro walks with a serious limp. While recuperating at home, and given time to think, his former idealism is almost completely gone, not helped by the fact that he has just learned that his father had passed away while he was in the hospital.
Things don’t get any better once he is back on the job. He accidentally wrecks his patrol car, and is given a temporary car that is literally falling to pieces. While on the road he encounters some rich kids who dress and act like privileged Americans; one is the son of a governor, who he arrests after the boy spits beer in his face.
Pedro is put on report for arresting the son of an important politician, but he doesn’t care anymore. He won’t take his old car back after it’s been repaired even though the one he has been “borrowing” is a “death trap.” He is told to report to a psychiatrist. He is asked if he hated his father (he loved him), or still liked women (absolutely). The psychiatrist proscribes drugs, and if they don’t “work,” he’ll proscribe stronger ones.
Later back on the road, Pedro observes what appears to be smugglers with a camper, and radios Anibal to tail the camper, and he will catch up to him to assist. But for a crucial few minutes he can’t start his junk car, during which time Anibal comes under fire from the smugglers. When Pedro finally gets his car to start he arrives too late, not helped by the fact that the car’s engine blows up and catches fire, so he has to run the rest of the way. Anibal’s car has been shot up, and he finds Anibal dying.
After Anibal’s funeral, Pedro and his former patrol instructor have a drink in a bar to commiserate; he tells him to forget about it and learn from what happened. On the television, Pres. George H.W. Bush is scolding Mexico about drug smuggling, and an angry Pedro, knowing as a cop that the U.S. has at least equal responsibility for the problems in Mexico, can’t tolerate the hypocrisy and throws a bottle at the television.
The drugs Pedro has been proscribed seems to have an effect on him, but only to focus more on his “job.” After getting his old car back, he picks up some impoverished kids who are illegally selling iguanas on the roadside. Confiscating the lizards, he takes the kids back to the village school. The villagers ask him to shoot a rabid dog, and he does so with all the single-minded determination of a Dirty Harry with a dash of theatrics, to the applause of a crowd of onlookers.
He is then led along a long, rickety bridge high above the valley to assist the daughter of a woman who wants her out of the house, because she is completely stoned.
To Pedro’s surprise it is Maribel. He takes her back to her room above the bar. He suspects that the first man she takes in is the one supplying her with drugs, and takes note of his vehicle, which he sees the next day during a drug drop. He heads off a couple of buyers (one wearing an expensive white suit) of what appears to be either cocaine or heroin and takes it from them after sending them off running down the road, and puts it in a briefcase he has buried in the desert.
Pedro discusses Maribel’s livelihood, and gives her money to take to her mother so she will agree to allow her to live with her and “dry out.” If Maribel doesn’t agree to stop prostituting or doing drugs, he will have her arrested.
His patrol supervisor calls him in and questions him about a police report about an unknown patrolman who detained two men on the road and took their drugs, and if he knows anything about it. Pedro denies any knowledge; his supervisor pretends to believe him (he knows it is common “practice”), merely telling him to be “careful.”
But Pedro is not “careful.” He is ready to ambush a helicopter making a pick-up in the desert. He gets into a shootout with the smugglers, who are better armed than he is despite Pedro carrying an M-16 rifle. They blow-up his car, and fly away, but Pedro hasn’t been hit. Maribel’s drug supplier is there, and he tracks him down in a ditch; he shouts to him he doesn’t want to shoot or arrest him, he just wants to know who the people in the helicopter are. Instead the dealer insists on engaging in a shootout, and in a sloppy engagement that is meant to be “realistic,” Pedro kills him.
Afterwards, Pedro’s supervisor congratulates him on his heroic deed, but when he tells him there still will be an investigation into his actions, Pedro decides he has had enough and resigns from the force; after Pedro leaves, the supervisor throws his badge into a drawer full of them, observing that most don’t even make it as far as Pedro did. Pedro then takes over driving Griselda’s truck…
…but doesn’t forget his other “responsibility”—keeping Maribel out of the prostitution business, promising her to give her money for her mother and herself to live on. The only way he can “manage” two households, we assume, is to utilize his hidden stash.
While Highway Patrolman saw business in Mexico, it was only shown in the U.S. briefly in Los Angeles, despite the fact that it is probably Cox’s best film, or at least on par with Repo Man. It is certainly his most realistic film, and did much to rehabilitate his reputation. Yet as film critic Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times noted, most Americans have this strange idea that “Mexican” films concern an “alien” culture that is of no interest to them and they can’t learn anything from them.
Thomas observes that “While it rightly skewers American hypocrisy and complicity in Mexican drug-trafficking, Highway Patrolman abounds in the timeless virtues of traditional filmmaking. Indeed, there is an epic quality, moral as well as visual, to the hero’s odyssey that recalls the Westerns of John Ford and John Huston.” It is a “sad commentary on the state of foreign-language film distribution in this country” that films like Patrolman are not seen.
It is an even worse commentary that the stories of the largest “minority” group in this country is virtually ignored by the film industry, only to be told through the eyes of the stereotypes and uninformed prejudices held by most people (and the media) in this country who have this ridiculous notion that Latin culture is "foreign."
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