Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely the worst movie.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Oren Shai's The Frontier is a slick Americana genre throwback, that truly makes me pine for the good ole days. I was lucky enough to catch this film at SXSW, and it was glorious to watch on the big screen. Shot on gorgeous Super 16mm with wardrobe and production design that leap off the screen like a pulp novel come to life.Laine arrives at The Frontier motel on the run from her problems, and she encounters a cast of characters with their own secrets to hide.Jocelin Donahue is superb as Laine, the girl on the run who uses her wits to stay one step ahead of everyone. This is truly a demanding role that she excels in, as she's on-screen for virtually the entire film. If this were a pulp book, I'd gladly read the next 10-20 episodes of her story. If I watched this in a drive in I'd have a hard time not thinking that I've gone back in time to 1974. So forget whatever tentpole blockbuster schlock that you're going to pay exorbitant prices to see at the local megaplex. Instead, let's turn the dial back and settle in to watch interesting people, behaving badly.

Oren Shai knows his archetypes, and plays brilliantly with them in this film-literate, paperback movie, artfully constructed with a wonderfully enigmatic central performance by Jocelin Donahue, playing a role similar to Nic Cage in RED ROCK WEST. The comparison is one that kept popping up in my mind. Both titles suggest Westerns but are in reality dusty, Southwestern Noirs, Both have the lead stumbling into a criminal scheme and then creating their own. Similar, also, is Shai's film to John Dahl's follow-up Noir, THE LAST SEDUCTION, in which we follow the femme fatale, instead of the tragic male.If made in the 90's, like the aforementioned pictures, I think this would be enjoying a wide-release right now. It clearly has the skill behind it. Shai is a beautiful stylist, creating the timeless palate of a decade never mentioned, but most likely the 70's, given the cars and wardrobe. However, the actors put their spin on movie stars of decades previous. There's Kelly Lynch doing her version of Gloria Swanson, Richard Harris doing his Errol Flynn, and Jim Beaver doing a Lee Marvin. Beaver stands out as the strongest. As much as the film portrays a slice of Americana Pulp, there's something almost European about the execution. It bypasses the luridness of the genre, and instead focusing on the lead, Donahue; photographing her lovingly, magnetically, like a muse, with long contemplative zooms. She has never looked better. And although we never fully learn about her character, she brings her inherent likability to it. She can be the Margot Kidder of our generation.Although it starts rather seriously, there is a streak of black humor laced throughout that begins to escalate, climaxing with a delirious shift by Kelly Lynch. I suggest watching with an audience to bring out the potential camp.Oh, and it's shot on 16mm. What else do you want?

I think this was actually a very good film! I wasn't expecting much, but it's one of those films that don't appear to have a promising plot at first, but then it grows on you through the good acting and the steadily increasing suspense!I just love the way Laine evolves as a character, or rather how we as viewers change the way we see her as the movie goes on... Very fine piece of characterization!Some crime thriller taking place in a run-down motel off some desert road doesn't sound like a big deal, but this IS a very good suspense thriller, with a lot of unexpected plot twists! It had me at the edge of my seat for most of the second half. It's not the setting or even the events themselves that make for a GREAT film, it's the way they get to us as viewers, and this film really got to me :)So I'd recommend this film to all lovers of suspenseful, unexpected thrillers :D

Whos says 1970s maxi skirts, wrinkly pantyhose and unkempt, brown hair can't be sexy! Jocelyn Donahue, as Laine definitely pulls off a convincing performance of a sweet girl in a dangerously wrong situation, who wriggles through perilous scrapes with the innocence of a lamb, though, as we soon find she is neither of the two. Though "The Frontier" has the appearance of a 70s TV Movie, with suitable, "barn-find" automobiles and even more antiquated TV sets(!) the action keeps one guessing (admittedly unsubtle), and the script never fails to spring surprises, right to the end. The medium budget drama has both the aura of a road movie and a Western, but in this Western you tend to have just the Bad and the Ugly. In this respect "The Frontier" reminded me of "The Hateful Eight" (2015). Both movies tend also to be pretty liberal in the mistreatment of women, but in taking sexual equality at face value all's fair in love and Hollywood. I think it is more a movie for the guys, thanks to the presence of Laine, doubtless prissily pretty, never showing too much to prove it. The character of Flyn the Englishman was pretty weak, thanks to his difficulty in mastering the tongue, but if you remember only the goofs of a movie it tends to be a "baddun" - right?. "The Frontier", thankfully does have one or two saving graces, e.g. that pass-the-parcel swag- bag of dollars, the ruthless internecine bumping off of adversaries and that all so understandable corruptibility of humans.