The Border plot
"He is as divided as the land itself."
Charlie (Jack Nicholson) is an agent with the US Border Patrol in Los Angeles. Pressured by his consumption-ill wife Marcy (Valerie Perrine), he moves to El Paso to live next door to Savannah, a former classmate. Savannah's husband Cat (Harvey Keitel) is border guard and shows Charlie around his new job site. His new duties will be to stem the daily influx of Mexican refugees at the border, round up illegal immigrants and send them back to Mexico. When it comes to light that Cat is not on the right track and is taking a share of the profits from a specific human trafficker, Charlie's conscience begins to gnaw.