BORDELINE (2025)

After penning the tight and hilarious Cocaine Bear (2023), Jimmy Warden makes his directorial debut with Borderline, starring his very watchable wife Samara Weaving – Azreal (2024), Ready or Not (2019) The Babysitter (2017) –  as a fictionalized ’90s Madonna, basically enduring an extremely exaggerated version of an actual event. On April 7th 1996, a 38-year-old drifter named Robert Dewey Hoskins jumped the security gate at Madonna’s Hollywood Hills estate with an aim to take her away and make her his wife. At his trial, Madonna testified that her employee relayed that Hoskins said “if he couldn’t have me, he was going to slice my throat from ear to ear.” Hoskins was sentenced to a mental facility and Madonna sold the property. Ten years later Hoskins escaped but was captured not far from the facility and subsequently returned. Those are the facts. Much like (but nothing like) Inglorious Bastards (2009) and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019), Warden attempts a re-imagining of the real events, save the pointed observations and gravitas. Funnily, it looks and feels exactly like all of the other Tarantino-esque inspired cinema offerings post Pulp Fiction (1994), such as 2 Days in the Valley (1996) and Freeway (1996), because it too is a bit of a mess. And like 2 Days in the Valley and Freeway it’s not all bad. It just has a hard time landing on a tone or mix of tones that work. It’s not that funny but desperately wants to be, and it’s not scary but has some very violent scenes. Eric Dane (Greg’s Anatomy) plays the uncharacteristically sympathetic security guard, but he plays it too straight with a little too much understanding. Ray Nicholson of Smile 2 (2024) gives it his all, however it’s not a good sign that I kept imaging other actors that might have faired better toeing the line between threatening and pitiful. Nicholson instead leans fully into batshit crazy. Jimmy Fails of Nickle Boys (2024) pays a respectful homage to Dennis Rodman in so far as to be the moral compass and his scenes with Weaving are among the film’s most subtle and interesting. It’s unfortunate that all of the effort and elements never quite blend into a good film. But it’s also not an entirely bad film. It is, in my opinion, borderline.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: Cinematographer Michael Lloyd is in large part responsible for the watchability of Borderline. The music is also quite great.