Review of Highway Patrolman (1991) by Stuart K — 28 Apr 2014

After Walker (1987), director Alex Cox was blacklisted from Hollywood, not only for attacking American foreign policy in that film, but also for breaking the WGA strike in 1988. Aside from doing introductions for BBC2's Moviedrome, he struggled to get films made, but his producer from Walker, Lorenzo O'Brien, had wrote a script, which Cox liked, however it was set in Mexico.

But language barriers didn't bother Cox a bit. It begins with Pedro Rojas (Roberto Sosa) joining the Mexican highway patrol, he's young but eager to learn, and do right for the community. He works in the rural north of Mexico, which has wide open spaces but is open to all sorts of corruption, which Rojas wants no part of.

However, his patrol partner Anibal Guerrero (Bruno Bichir) frequently takes bribes, which Rojas is scornful of. But, it's not long before Rojas starts turning to a life of crime, he cheats on his wife Griselda (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) with a local prostitute called Maribel (Vanessa Bauche), and it's Rojas who gets the money for it, not Maribel.

But it's not long before this corrupt lifestyle catches up with Rojas big time. Even in Spanish, you can recognise Cox's stylistic direction and offbeat set-ups. It makes for an interesting moral tale about about the trouble corruption and power can land some people in, it should have seen Cox return to cinema, but he's struggled with trying to get films made ever since.

Shame.