Sometimes powerful but too often sluggish film about MAGA's favorite bogeyman, illegal immigrants of color. Best thing about it is its raw, grainy, docu-drama look and feel, with unknown actors (Ned Beatty and Jerry Hardin excepted), giving it a most welcome, non Hollwoodized look at the travails and very fleeting happiness of a farm worker named Roberto (well played by Domingo Ambriz) who makes the ill fated decision, as did his father, to leave his home for The Land Of Opportunity.
The film's biggest flaw is that Roberto's journey is a way too slow one. If director Robert M. Young had ever internalized the art of pacing it does not show in this movie where scenes tend to go on way too long (for example, the one where Roberto's fellow alambristas instruct him in how to order breakfast at a diner, the one set in the Holy Roller church, the interminably dull story Hardin's redneck character tells, etc), thus draining them of excitement and interest. Fortunately, the key scene, where Roberto finds out about his father and, as a result, has a break down and returns home is handled quite effectively with a general lack of sentimentality that makes Roberto's crack up heartbreaking rather than merely hysterical. And the scenes set in down and out Stockton rival those of John Huston set in that same place in "Fat City", made at around the same time. I also liked the musical score by Michael Martin Murphey that is a combination of Ry Cooderish border, blues, ranchera and country and that helps to get the viewer over the film's frequent speed bumps. B minus.