A hokey morality play with sporadic thriller elements, Conor Allyn’s No Man’s Land draws on aspects of the Western genre but plays more like a faith-based drama with the faith elements slightly toned down. Its lessons are mostly well-intentioned, although they could come across as condescending to viewers who aren’t from a background similar to the main characters. Those intentions don’t excuse the simplistic storytelling and maddening contrivances, or all of the inexplicable actions of main character Jackson Greer (Allyn’s brother Jake, who also co-wrote the screenplay).
Jackson lives on a cattle ranch in Texas in what the opening title cards describe as the “no man’s land” between the Rio Grande and the checkpoints along the U.S.-Mexico border. That means that the Greer family ranch is within the U.S. but still outside the barriers meant to control immigration, and thus undocumented immigrants crossing from Mexico frequently trespass across Greer property. Jackson’s father Bill (Frank Grillo) has become a hardened “minuteman,” quick to grab a gun for what he sees as defense of his property, eager to call the Border Patrol whenever he spots any Mexicans attempting to get into the U.S.
Jackson is sensitive and more than a little naive, a star baseball player with an imminent tryout for the Yankees that his father and his mother (Andie MacDowell) see as a ticket out of the struggling life of a rancher. But Jackson loves working on the ranch and is content to stay in Texas. His misguided commitment to the family turns into his downfall, when he follows his dad and his brother Luke (Alex MacNicoll) one night as they round up their cattle who have escaped through a broken fence and crossed the river into Mexico. Bill is protective of Jackson and wants him to stay safe at home so he’s ready for his Yankees tryout, but Jackson charges ahead anyway, riding his horse right into the middle of a confrontation between the Greers and a group of undocumented border-crossers led by a man known as the Shepherd (Jorge A. Jimenez).
The Greers draw their guns, a melee ensues, and Jackson fires at the Shepherd’s young son, killing him. When local Texas Ranger Ramirez (George Lopez) arrives on the scene, Bill decides to take all the blame for himself, but Ramirez isn’t buying it. The next day, Ramirez confronts Jackson, who’s returned to the crime scene in the first of many idiotic decisions he makes in the aftermath of the killing. Rather than demonstrate his clear remorse by allowing himself to be taken into custody, Jackson flees on horseback across the river to Mexico.
Thus begins a sort of parable in which the undocumented-immigration narrative is reversed, albeit in a clumsy, heavy-handed way. Now Jackson is the one who’s undocumented in a country he wasn’t born in, unable to speak the local language and forced to toil at manual labor in order to survive. Yet despite his clear lack of even the most basic life skills, Jackson bumbles into multiple situations in which strangers help him out for no apparent reason.
Jackson stops a random driver on the side of the road and ends up hired to work on a ranch where his knowledge of horse training endears him to the owner’s family. The boss’ daughter takes him out to a local bar and then gives him money and a bus ticket so that he can travel to the hometown of the boy he killed for some sort of atonement. Later, when he’s fleeing from a cartoonish criminal who offers to “help” the Shepherd attain vengeance, Jackson finds another kind couple who take him in. Even Ranger Ramirez, traveling across the border to extradite Jackson back to Texas (because he’s a murderer, remember), is as concerned about protecting and understanding the young man as he is about bringing him to justice.
Along the way, Jackson learns that, despite what his father has taught him, Mexicans are people, too. When he picks up the dropped wallet of the kid he killed, he finds a picture of the kid in a baseball uniform. On the bus to his destination, he befriends a young boy and his mother, who patiently explains to Jackson that just because she can speak English, that doesn’t mean she’s been living in the U.S. No Man’s Land treats every one of these basic lessons as world-shattering revelations, holding Jackson up as some paragon of understanding because he discovers that his bigoted viewpoints were inaccurate.
It doesn’t help that Jake Allyn is a bland screen presence with a perpetually dopey-looking expression, whose performance is ill-suited to the script he wrote for himself. Jackson is less a character than a vehicle for the movie’s self-congratulatory social commentary, and his family relationships are painted broadly, with the rest of the Greer clan disappearing for most of the middle of No Man’s Land. Jackson’s parents have one scene in which they hastily recant their negative view on Mexicans, and their quick change of heart is only slightly less unbelievable than Jackson’s.
Maybe the Allyns see No Man’s Land as a way to reach the real-life Greers, using what looks like a Western thriller to impart truths about our shared humanity. But the thriller isn’t thrilling, and whenever mortal danger pops up (usually from the silly small-time hustler with a vendetta against Jackson), there’s no suspense or excitement to it. Jackson continues to make dumb choices throughout the film, and is then rewarded for them by being portrayed nearly as a saint. The solemn, understated score and the gritty handheld camerawork frame No Man’s Land as a serious drama about serious characters, but it’s barely a step above the Lifetime movies that Conor Allyn directed earlier in his career.
Starring Jake Allyn, Frank Grillo, Jorge A. Jimenez, George Lopez, Andie MacDowell, Alex MacNicoll and Esmeralda Pimentel, No Man’s Land opens Friday, Jan. 22 in select theaters and on VOD.