REVIEW: ‘Highway Patrolman’
Photo: From left, Bruno Bichir and Roberto Sosa star in Highway Patrolman, a 1991 movie by director Alex Cox. Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber / Provided by Film Forum press site.
Alex Cox’s 1991 gem, Highway Patrolman, is a thoughtful, sweeping look at one man’s difficulties with a system that is rife with corruption. More than a quarter century after its initial release, the movie still jumps off the screen with verve and vivacity, mostly because of the towering central performance from Roberto Sosa.
Sosa plays Pedro, a young man who becomes a highway patrolman in Mexico. He spends his days in his squad car traveling the lonely highways of a desert-like landscape. There are smugglers and drug pushers in the area, plus punk teenagers and a host of vehicular violations, but there’s also unparalleled beauty in the environment.
Each stop of a possible suspect presents a Shakespearean drama for Pedro. He must decide how much force to bring to the encounter and when to take a payoff from the complaining violator. By and large, Pedro tries to keep his integrity intact and refuses to shy away from complicated arrests of prominent people in the community. However, his direct supervisor is none too pleased when Pedro seems to buck departmental guidelines (even the unspoken ones) and apprehend people who seemingly have a get-out-of-jail-free-card.
Case in point: Pedro books a teenager for driving too fast and then spitting in his face. When he brings the ne’er-do-well to the police station, it’s Pedro who finds that he has done something wrong. This teenager’s father is a local crime boss, and that means justice will not be served in the courts.
Things take a dark turn when a horrible tragedy takes the life of Pedro’s friend and colleague, and now the patrolman decides to circumvent the entire system and bring his own definition of investigatory vigilantism to bear.
In addition to watching the professional forays of Pedro, the audience also follows his personal life, including a marriage to a woman he stops along the highway and his relationship with a local sex worker. In these familial and friendly scenes, Pedro seems uneasy, as if the life of a patrolman is always consuming his thoughts. There’s anxiousness on his face, and his conversations often result in him storming off.
Pedro is an imperfect hero of the story. He resorts to violence and does not seem tethered to too many principles in life, except vengeance for his friend, but the result of his actions is often Robin-Hood-esque. One scene finds him yelling at children for selling iguanas on the roadside. Rather than giving them a few pesos, he instead puts them forcefully into his police car and drives them to school. When he arrives in their small community, he dispatches a rabid dog, much to the delight of the frightened neighbors watching nearby.
Cox captures the Mexican landscape which such deftness and poetry. There are many beige colors on his pallet, and the ragged brush on the sides of the road frame individual shots. Sometimes these highway scenes open up to enormously satisfying vistas and unique topographical features.
Pedro, a local who is used to the terrain, does not pay any extra mind to the surroundings. He’s focused — almost without blinking — on the bad guys who think they can challenge his machismo and authority. In this central character, the audience finds power incarnate, and his foe is a system that never lets up in its corruptive ways.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Highway Patrolman (1991), written by Lorenzo O’Brien and directed by Alex Cox, stars Roberto Sosa, Bruno Bichir, Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Vanessa Bauche and Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez. Running time: 104 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Recently released in a new 4K restoration from Kino Lorber. Click here for more information. Rating: 
