Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright (2010)

It is the biggest story of the last five years, yet H-wood will not touch Bernie Madoff because he sold them out and he sold out his own people.Instead we get films like Across The Line, a shaky shot that takes Bernie's story and dumps it on an anglo guy seekng redemption.Shaky camera equals tension in this one - to the director that is...to the audience it plays like an episode of 24.Low budget...original dramaesque.The real story of a billion dollar ponzi is right there: The criminal Madoff, the son who pays the sins of the father. Is Hollywood brave enough to tell it...only if they change the name of the man.

Nice screenplay writer who did the nice directing. The casting was great, the acting of all the actors on both sides of the border were also top-notched. There was a very strong nostalgic feeling and melancholy touch throughout the whole movie. Rarely a movie would portray from so many angles from so many different parties: The FBI agent in charge with a big heart, the loyal FBI young agent with a dubious gender mix-up, the two past prime Russian mafia, the hired hit-man and hit team from U.S., the desperate Don of the Mexican Northern Cartel(Andy Garcia was so great in this movie), his younger brother(a very cool Mexican actor), his wife, then, there's the lonely Mexican whore, the scamming con artist(Quinn also did a great and very reserved job) who's so desperately trying to locate his estranged Mexican lover and their love's product, a daughter the guy never met before. All these ingredients were put together so smooth, and sometimes, very poetically beautiful.The gun fight scenes were carried out pretty good, the sound track, the camera, the editing, the colors...they are all very classy. An obvious low budget movie, but definitely not a B movie, the production money was well spent. Absolutely worth watching.

This movie is almost a bad "made for TV" video. It tries hard to be artsy but has nothing real in that department except some nice guitar music and scenery. Aidan Quinn is one of those actors that seems to have the chops but just comes off as flat all the time. There just isn't much about him to hold your interest in any film. Why is Andy Garcia playing his really cliché Cuban guy who is always wearing white and smoking a cigar- tinted glasses too? (the usual problem with movies - giving costume people license to go overboard)? He is supposed to be Mexican. Gina Gershon was also silly playing his Mexican wife. The only acting in this movie that doesn't come off as hokey is Mario Van Peebles and Claudia Ferri (who played the prostitute and did the best job here). By the way, why was the wrinkle cream so important??? This is just a list of 'B' actors.There were also some completely implausible things happening in this movie. How did the Russian mafia guys always seem to know where Charlie (and Garza) was? Why would all the bad guys just walk away at the end because one FBI agent had Charlie in custody (100's of millions of dollars were at stake)? *** Also to the the above reviewer: Garza was clearly not out for revenge. This makes no sense - he hadn't even had any dealings with Charlie. He just needed money to pay back the people from Mexico City - they made that pretty clear over and over in the movie.**** and a note to all you other reviewers for all IMDb movies: Where did all of you get the idea that a review has to contain a synopsis??? We don't need to read your long rambling re-telling of the story (with errors). It reminds me of people all learning that when you read, you have to talk in a special "reading" tone of voice. It just reeks of bad early teachers.

I was pleasantly Surprised with this movie I felt that it was well acted and well produced. Would have been better if it was available in Blu-Ray. I thought that the sound track was good and really rocked the sub woofer. I thought that the scene where Charlie was about to get captured seemed a bit hard to believe though. Not sure why the Mexican and Russian gangs would stop for the FBI when they have no jurisdiction in Mexico. I also had a hard time with understanding how Charlie escaped from the bull ring. I also thought that they could have developed Charlie's daughter a little more as well. I thought that the roll of the FBI detective was well played