Old-fashioned cowboys and lawmen still ride the range along the banks of the Rio Grande in "Western," the third feature-length documentary by the brothers Turner and Bill Ross. Specialists at a kind of intimate, incisive community portraiture, the Rosses here fashion an elegiac tale of two cities -- small cattle towns on opposite sides of the Texas-Mexico border -- whose neighborly tranquility is threatened by the encroaching shadow of the Mexican drug cartels. (Were the title not already in use, the movie might have been named "A Most Violent Year.") Like the brothers' earlier work, the result is a low-key but sharply observed work that benefits from real local flavor and a gift for lyric image making. Commercial prospects are modest at best, but Sundance will hardly be the film's last festival rodeo.
| Directed by | Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross |
