The Arroyo

A rancher, tired of the damages caused to his ranch every night by the illegal immigrants crossing the border, runs afoul of the cartel and coyotes. Frustrated with his government's lack of response or willingness to deal with the issue directly, he takes things into his own hands, and attempts to disrupt the nightly immigrations.

This is a movie that will get high marks from the right-wingers and gun rights activists, and will get comparisons to "No Country For Old Men". It is not as suspenseful as "No Country...", but it is, perhaps, closer to reality and less fictitious than "No Country...". Kenny Maines and Danny Armendariz both do great jobs of being believable characters.

Whatever your political views, it's a pretty good show and worth watching, especially if you live in the western US, where you might be closer to the issue of illegal immigration.

Trash produced by bigots. No redeeming qualities as a movie. Only propaganda by and for stupid people. The entire crew and cast, the writer especially (who is also the director naturally, since no self-respecting director would ever agree to make a movie out of hateful unsympathetic junk writing such as this and not be immune from obvious accusations of complicity that would haunt his career forever), but the actors as well, they must all hate themselves to stoop so low to agree to take part in this crime of cinema. I can understand a valid propaganda film that professes its biased viewpoint upfront, tells you like it is, no pulled punches, but this movie masquerades as a serious drama, as if this is a valid Hollywood or Indie film about real people, made in the tradition of filmmaking, either as a documentary or a drama that cares about its characters, instead of what this really is: a sledgehammer wielded by a deranged maniac smashing your skull in with his words and pictures of oh-so-much wisdomly hate, lies, and drivel.

The Arroyo is better than most of the low budget (independent?) stuff being made today. Quite a few mistakes but compared to some of the 'basura' I have endured on Neflix and Amazon, it is a gem. Ok, some problems: the political meeting that the men attended was for a Maricopa congressman. Phoenix, the capital of AZ is in Maricopa county, but they do not have any dirt on the border. In fact, Phoenix is 150 miles north of the border. Tucson, where I am from is still 50 miles from the border. The long stretch of AZ/Mex border pretty much has only three towns of any size; Yuma, Nogales, and Douglas. Also, this land is very hot and barren and does not work out well for cattle or ranching with the exception of "porky spas" and the High Chapperal.

I've waundered astray, so back to the film. The characters were a bit redundant and the lines given them a bit cliche, but overall performed adequately. Not much depth given to the wife and the son was a little too "old west" for a modern rendering. The cartels down here in the Southwest are invasive, however not suicidal as portrayed in the flick.

Once again, a decent movie for the buck.

This isn't a slick, big studio production but the pace is good, the characters are likable, and the acting is more than passable.

The story, is a good one, and will resonate with a lot of Americans. Law enforcement, and federal agencies sitting on their hands where illegal drug, and human importation are concerned.

Good guys take the law into their own hands, and the bad guys raise the stakes.

It's an exciting, if not a little predictable ride to the climax.

I enjoyed it. In this day and age of big budget films that too often disappoint.... this was a nice little low budget gem that kept me entertained right to the end.

I really wanted to love this movie but I'm gonna have to give it a 5. It does shed light on the current and very real concerns Americans living on the border have been facing for years now. I know it's a low budget film so I don't mind the lack of a soundtrack or other high budget special effects, but the acting was so unrealistic and cliche it kind of took away from the seriousness of the story it's telling. I found that to be very distracting and a little disappointing. Shut In and Run Hide Fight were so much better, the acting much more believable. And don't get me started on Lady Ballers, I couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity. This one wasn't a win, but don't give up Jeremy and team! I'm still looking forward to your next production.