A Day Without a Mexican (2004)

Okay, now this is just pitiful. This film should be held aloft as an object lesson on how a resourceful filmmaker can take an irresistible premise and, through lack of talent and bad decision-making, fuck it up completely. It's pitched halfway between an agitprop documentary and a speculative satire, but it doesn't have the teeth for the former or the control for the latter. So sadly, it ends up looking like the world's longest 'America's Most Wanted' re-enactment, with all the fudging and shortcut-taking and awful amateur acting that label implies. To be fair, its heart is in the right place. It has good intentions. But that only makes it more difficult to endure, as witnessing this wreck involves watching those intentions die a fiery painful death. Ignore this ham-handed nonsense; if you're dying to see a film about the importance of immigrant labor, there's always Farmingville.

Grade: D