The Line, or La Linea as it was released under, is a downbeat little film about American assassin Mark Shields (Ray Liotta), following him as he navigates the treacherous political and criminal terrain in Mexico, right around the time of a suspected overthrow and shift in cartel power. The leader of the tijuana cartel (a listless Andy Garcia) is terminally ill, and a sadistic young upstart (Esai Morales) wants to take over the business. This creates a lot of commotion and violence, much of which is dealt out by Liotta, with the help of a great big sniper rifle. Now the plot is pretty muddled, and I saw it a lot time ago. I was never really clear who Liotta is actually working for, the Mexican faction or a couple shady agency dudes (Joe Morton and Bruce Davison). In any case, he's wounded in a gunfight and takes shelter with a Mexican woman (Valerie Cruz) and her son in a small village nearby. It's a meandering little film that doesn't quite know if it wants to be an action flick, a drug war docudrama or a noirish character study, but dabbles in all three before arriving at a conclusion that I had to rewind at least three times to understand, and then still didn't get it. Armand Assante wanders around as a mysterious preacher, Danny Trejo shows his mug as a deadly cartel assassin, as well as Gary Daniels and Kevin Gage in smaller roles. Not really a great flick, but peppered with enough familiar faces and genre tradition to garner some interest.
