‘Line in the Sand’ Reveals Border Chaos on Steroids

admin October 28, 2024

The border wall Kamala Harris says she’s itching to build gets a workout in “Line in the Sand.”

Journalist-turned-filmmaker James O’Keefe shows parts of the finished wall getting cut in the documentary’s opening moments. It’s just one of many shocking sights in a film made outside the Hollywood ecosystem.

Of course.

The riveting documentary’s blend of O’Keefe’s undercover work and shoe-leather reportage leaves a mark. The takeaway? The U.S./Mexico border is a crisis unfolding in real time. It’s even worse than we imagine.

Greed. Corruption. Government excess. Human trafficking. Drugs. Lost children. O’Keefe’s camera captures it all, with melodramatic asides from our on-screen host.

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O’Keefe and a small crew go south of the border to investigate the existing border wall and the parties that feed off immigration chaos.

They interview plenty of migrants, finding some eager to share their stories and destinations. The dangers are immense for the wannabe Americans, from falling off moving trains to knowing children can disappear at any step in the journey. 

Nothing stops them. They keep on coming, hoping for a sliver of the American dream.

The right-leaning O’Keefe has plenty of empathy for the migrants. They’ve been told by Team Biden to come on in. Heck, we’ll pick up the tab, the future president vowed during the 2020 campaign.

You might risk it all, too, for a better life for your family.

O’Keefe is on hand every step of the way, narrating his journey and putting himself in harm’s way to glean information.

“I’m just doing my job,” he hears more than a few times. Buck passing abounds. Moral lines are crossed over and again. And people react poorly when O’Keefe’s camera crew shows up.

The latter proves revealing. It also gives “Sand” some storytelling friction. The subject matter does the rest.

Not all of the revelations land as squarely as the film may hope. Sometimes O’Keefe’s sensationalist brand makes an unwanted cameo. He’s still doing the digging that so many journalists won’t, and he uncovers a treasure trove of despair and deceit.

Hidden microphones do some of the heavy lifting. O’Keefe’s one-on-one exchanges gather serious intel.

A few revelations shouldn’t come as a surprise. Venezuelan criminals are flowing into the U.S., something Aurora, Colo. residents have learned the hard way.

Other migrants have better intentions, but they arrive knowing the exact towns where they’re headed. How does that happen? And we watch buses taking the illegals to various drop-off points, all on Uncle Sam’s dime.

Some border patrol agents express frustration with doing a job with one hand tied behind their backs. Others simply shrug and get back to “work.” 

The segments involving children hit the hardest. Trafficking abounds. Parents aren’t automatically reunited with their children, while “sponsors” often take children from the various sponsors. Last year’s sleeper hit  “Sound of Freedom” touched on the issue and got mauled by the press.

That tells you how radioactive the topic remains. Few, if any, media outlets will follow up on what O’Keefe uncovers. Anyone shocked?

Is some of the material in “Sand” distorted or otherwise tweaked to heighten the dramatic stakes? Possibly. Is all of it fake? Impossible.

We’re left with trouble questions. Why is this broken system only getting worse? Why is one party fine with the status quo and the other lacking the political will to bring real change to the border.

“It’s just all about the money. It’s not about people,” O’Keefe says in disbelief at one point in the film. Watch “Line in the Sand,” and you’ll nod in agreement. 

HiT or Miss: “Line in the Sand” is bleak, harrowing and necessary. And it took one of the original citizen journalists to make it possible.

The post ‘Line in the Sand’ Reveals Border Chaos on Steroids appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.


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