What a disappointed this movie was! Westerns are not the easiest movies to make, most of the time it's just macho behavior against other machos. In this movie it's basically the same but in contrast with good westerns (where they have good actors that can play mean vilains, like Eastwood, Van Cleef and others) you now get a movie full of machos but played by bad actors and a very lousy directing. What the hell was Ron Perlman thinking to play in this movie? Did he read the script? Was he desperate for a role? It's certainly one of the worst if not the worst movie he ever played in. The story of Bass Reeves sounded like an interesting story to make a movie about, but this is just an insult to his story. Wes Miller did a messed up job writing this story and he did an even worse job directing it. People getting gut and leg shots look like they could run a marathon two minutes later, it's just beyond ridiculous. The drawing of the guns in the usual face offs you get in westerns are so slow it's just laughable and painful to watch. There is absolutely nothing good about this western, probably one of the worst westerns I ever watched, certainly in my top three of stinkers in this genre. And then you got the music which absolutely didn't fit in this movie, very irritating. In fact the whole movie irritated me, couldn't wait for the end to come.

Given that African Americans haven't been represented well in the western film genre despite in real life having a big impact during the days of the wild west, I was really interested in seeing this movie, especially since it was based on a real African American lawman (Bass Reeves). But whatever your ethnicity may be, I am pretty sure that you will find this movie to be simply terrible.

The portrayal of Bass Reeves here is extremely unsatisfying. About all that the movie can think of to do with this character is for him to regularly meet people who are racist and/or doubtful he can do the job, and brood silently about it. If they had really explored this character deeply, I'm sure things would have been better.

However, even if great effort had been made to portray Bass Reeves in a multidimensional manner, the movie would still have been pretty awful. Right from the start, viewers will see that the movie did not have much of a budget - cinematography looks almost like VHS quality, the locations are drab and boring, there's not much in the way of props, the costumes look too clean and too new, and the sets are really flimsy and cheap.

Probably due to this pittance of a budget, the filmmakers didn't seem able to put in a lot of spectacle. The movie is really slow-moving, with a lot of (cliched) dialogue instead of action and a swift pace.

I'm sure the filmmakers had their heart in the right place, but the end results indicate that they should have waited to get a bigger budget (and a better script) before filming started. As it is, it's yet another Lions Gate / Grindstone production that's way below par.

HELL ON THE BORDER is a pretty disappointing indie-style western that feels like amateur hour at times. I find the western genre lends itself to proper budgets: you need to be able to convincingly portray townships and the rugged landscapes associated with this genre, and a bunch of guys chatting in a closed set doesn't really cut it. The visuals are all wrong although the cast, which includes turns from Ron Perlman and Frank Grillo, isn't bad. But it's the budget, or lack thereof, that sinks this one.