Jackson Greer is both a fish out of water and a man out of time in Conor Allyn’s contemporary Western “No Man’s Land,” although you wouldn’t know it by the way Jake Allyn’s handsome Texas rancher reckons with having killed a migrant boy in the heat of confrontation by cheerily swigging beers at a Mexico bar. And what about his brother, who was stabbed in the chaos and is knocking on death’s door? No matter: Jackson’s too busy eyeing the daughter of a welcoming Mexican family before the banjo thrums to introduce another treacle life-on-the-range montage. But wait...mustn’t he hurry to join the Yankees, who are about to sign him to their organization? Perhaps not! In an unintentionally hilarious payoff (“payoff” here being stretched to its absolute limits), the ostensible importance of Jackson’s gifted pitcher background only serves to justify his being able to hurl a pebble with lethal accuracy when “No Man’s Land” jolts from mild-mannered drama back into rugged survivalist thriller.
“No Man’s Land” (not to be mistaken with Chloe Zhao’s comparatively messianic “Nomadland”) is a movie of inelegant craft, five-cent metaphors and stilted convictions, though its most self-defeating attribute is how it cheats itself into having a short memory. The screenplay (written by Jake Allyn, Conor’s brother, and David Barraza) coughs into dramatic gear with the rifle’s blast of that aforementioned tragedy, and as a Texas Ranger (played by George Lopez) confronts him in the aftermath, Jackson jumps on his horse and high-tails it across the Rio Grande into Mexico. What awaits is a cultural awakening that’s far too bleary-eyed to make sense of its thematic and narrative contexts.
The best way to describe how “No Man’s Land” unfolds is that crossing the border seems to have a kind of memory-wiping effect on Jackson, who aimlessly wanders astride his horse while tangling with goofy caricatures of tattooed foes as fragments of that fateful night occasionally resurface like shattered recollections. A suggestion of internal conflict? Maybe. But it feels more like the movie taking awkward steps to remind us of how Jackson got here; ironically, the movie itself is keen on forgetting. Meanwhile, his hard-boiled loyalty to family, emphasized in earlier scenes with mom (Andie MacDowell) and dad (Frank Grillo), is replaced with a casual curiosity through an unknown country, as if he were a vacationer and not an outlaw. The plot depends on the dead boy’s father, now in revenge mode, to spark an evasive sense of urgency.
“No Man’s Land” is doe-eyed when we expect it to be on high alert (that goes for story as well as character), and the result is a movie boasting a totality of border-drama elements in sore need of finesse. The result is as barren as the desert trails Jackson navigates before being taken in by a family all too eager to help out. It’s become a strange compulsion, in stories of Mexican travels from American filmmakers, to include at least one or two instances of random code-switching – but has the drama ever actually been heightened when a character delivers a nugget of wisdom to another who they know won’t understand? – and, sure enough, we observe it here. But the movie also insists on nonsensical tone-switching too, as the Allyns, both behind and in front of the camera, struggle to mold their various tropes and cliches into anything that’s novel or moving. Their goal is to shape Jackson’s journey into one where common ground is located with his cross-border neighbors, but sincerity drowns in sheepishness. That comes down to the movie’s most basic touches—it isn’t difficult to believe Jackson’s unfamiliarity with Mexico, because Jake Allyn’s clean-cut appearance and athletic build already has us hesitant to buy into his character’s rural cowpoke roots.
More engaging than our protagonist’s didactic quest toward enlightenment is the parallel journey taken by Jorge Jimenez’s Gustavo, the father of the boy Jackson killed whose gentle soul (quite literally, fellow coyotes call him “the Shepherd”) is tested by his grief. Jimenez imbues the role with a complexion that Jake Allyn is unable to muster, his motivations standing in stark relief to other Mexican characters who are mostly in the mix just to accommodate Jackson’s soul-searching. Gustavo’s searching as well, and the way Jimenez spins torment into confusion – his gaze hardening, his stature tightening up – commands our sympathy in a movie that’s otherwise superficial. “No Man’s Land” isn’t a drama that takes sides (that, at least, we’re able to glean from its messy messaging), yet it’s a testament to Jimenez’s commanding work across just a handful of scenes that we become more invested in where Gustavo’s reckoning leaves him than where Jackson’s takes him.
“Texas looks just like Mexico,” Gustavo’s son tells him in a quiet early moment atop a hill, before borders are crossed and blood is shed. It’s a moment of sweet naivete that is the closest thing “No Man’s Land” offers as a thesis, which makes it all the more curious that the film itself ultimately doesn’t rise above that narrow worldview. Even as it eventually realigns itself on the axis of Jackson’s debilitating guilt, his redemption is one to be glorified by the narrative machinery—he’s never truly interrogated, aside from some simple climbs over language barriers. “No Man’s Land,” in the end, isn’t a very successful story about deciphering the gaps between people, and even less so as a story about deciphering differences in perception.
"No Man's Land" is rated PG-13 for some strong violence and language. It will be available in some theaters and on VOD, starting Friday.
Starring: Jake Allyn, Frank Grillo, Jorge Jimenez, Andie MacDowell
Directed by Conor Allyn
2021
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- ‘The Dig’ Review: Netflix’s scattershot archaeology drama is an expedition with little to discover
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- ‘The Reason I Jump’ Review: The experiences of a person with autism are explored in colorful, spirited, lightly profound new doc
