The Thin Yellow Line (2015) User Reviews

Life as it is for workers painting the highway lines from San Jacinto to San Carlos

[Nuribe87 · 8/10 · 17 March 2017]

I have to admit that I absolute adore movies that embrace the ordinariness of life, and this movies definitely does so. A simple working man who gets fired, or better said gets replaced by a dog, from the surveillance of a car dumpster, starts a journey looking for a new job. He finds one easily at a gas station, where he meets up again with an old employer of his. An engineer who still remembers him as a hardworking man and he offers him a job to coordinate the painting of the lines of a highway between San Jacinto and San Carlos for a total of 217 km.

The job has to be finish in a total of 15 days with an inexperienced crew of 4 (Gabriel, Pablo, Atayde and Mario). Gabriel who used to drive trailers is falling blind, Atayde a family man who used to work at a circus, Mario a former convict for robbery, and Pablo a misfit boy with a troubling family history.

The days pass by with nights on the outdoors in the Mexican desert, where each one of the characters starts slowly to share their story of life, love, and misconceptions. The narrative is simple and subtle, as subtle as the desert and the heat itself. The characters remain true to their own personalities and essential qualities throughout the movie, while embracing the present moment of their lives and jobs, and acknowledging the experience of sharing and learning from one another.

Preciosa.

[briefexistance · 6/10 · 5 January 2019]

Overall, was a beautiful journey, but I do have a major complain: I wished the last 20 minutes were longer, maybe another extra hour to unfold the story in a more organic and intense way. I felt like they run out of money and speeded the velocity of the storytelling, giving me as result a dissatisfying feeling of watching a unfinished film. The first hour was beautifully performed, this is the struggle of rural and uneducated population here at Mexico. The hard work of painting the divisive yellow line in Mexico's highways, serves as an analogy for guidance. The yellow line is a guide in the road, and in many ways all the gentleman working here are lacking some main guidance towards self-realization. I just loved it, it was poetic and a truthful portray of rural Mexico in so many ways, that it deserved 3 hours of 2:30 of duration. Beautiful work.

Men at work, Mexican style...

[HedgehoginPS · 9/10 · 8 January 2016]

The Thin Yellow Line just played the Palm Springs International FilmFest. Having lived and worked in Mexico many years ago, I was immediately struck by its ring of authenticity. Everything about it reflects workaday life in "blue collar" Mexico. The story centers around a down-on-his-luck working stiff, Toño (Damian Alcaraz), encountering an old acquaintance who hires him to ramrod a crew of misfits (four guys who might have been picked up at some Home Depot parking lot) to paint a centerline on a back-country road in northern Mexico--210 km. in 15 days. The five of them, a beater pickup, an antiquated walk-behind spray painter, a wheelbarrow, and a dog undertake their own little odyssey. The task is simple; new challenges appear daily. Over a couple of weeks, what starts as a band of bothers becomes, slightly twisted, a band of brothers. The language, the horse play, the problems they encounter and their solutions to them are totally, characteristically, the Mexico I once knew. Because work pivots the plot, Thin Yellow Line exalts the working man in a way that few films of this genre do. Billed as a comedy (and occasionally quite funny), it's a minor-key Homeric, authentic slice of life in working class Mexico. An enjoyable film to watch, its awards are well deserved.

Excellent movie

[moviequeen-76940 · 10/10 · 14 June 2019]

I found this movie by accident and have shared it with my family. I enjoyed it so much I bought it to watch again since I found it was no longer available anywhere. I wish it had subtitles so I could share it with my non speaking Spanish friends. I am familiar with some of the actors. I love the story line and how each character has their own story they share as they work together on this journey while learning to paint the thin yellow line. The hot sun, the rain and the obstacles they encounter they still find time for humors stories. Their compassion for each other and the dog begins to rub off on their boss even though the ending is not a happy one. I love this movie and will continue sharing it with whom ever can understand Spanish.

A good Mexican film

[gamermx-73830 · 9/10 · 20 April 2017]

Nice movie about ordinariness of life. A man who has lost everything, founds a new reason to keep living. A travel watched from 5 different points of view. A Well made sound and photo work, showing Mexican desert in its whole beauty. A very watchable movie. If you like to see something different, watch it.

The development of bonding among unknown men.

[carmo-5 · 10/10 · 2 March 2023]

The Mexican film La Delgada Línea Amarilla (2015) (The Thin Yellow Line) is a road movie very different from all the other road movies I've seen - five hired men (followed by a dog) walk 200 km on foot, painting a yellow dashed line on a stretch of a road in Mexico. As the task takes days to be finished, the group faces a few events they need to deal with. It was written and directed by Celso García who, in a very ingenious way, created and managed the filming of a simple story that is at the same time inspiring and engaging, in which the five characters get to know each other and create bonds of friendship as they travel along the road doing their job. It was one of the best movies I watched in 2022.

Eight steps to recitation

[EdgarST · 5/10 · 28 December 2017]

A gang of five road laborers has the task of painting the discontinuous yellow line between two Mexican towns, under inclement sun, camping during cold night and finishing the work before the rains come. The crew consists of a watchman, a waiter, a circus worker, a thief and a truck driver, all previously unemployed. The instruction is to take five steps painting the line with a machine that atomizes the paint on the road and then take another eight steps without painting. This strategy is similar to the structure of Celso García's script, who debuted as a director with "The Thin Yellow Line", under the auspice of producers Bertha Navarro ("Reed: Insurgent Mexico"), Alejandro Springall ("Santitos") and Guillermo del Toro ("The Labyrinth of the Faun"). The idea is valid. The problem is that every eight steps equates to pauses in the action so all five men can make forced statements of their personal pasts. In contrast, the five steps of work are the most interesting. When the five men work or solve obstacles, their actions define them better than their (often-overemotional) recitations of what happened to them in the past. The five actors are very good and they do the best they can with their dialogues. But besides this weak point of the script, you have montages of scenes of "camaraderie" with gay music, overused resolutions and shots (for example, when a patient is carried in gurney, we the audience watch the ceiling and lights), a bitch that adds the "Disney touch ", a short flirt with a beautiful girl, plus a gruesome ending. As a result it turns into a poor drama instead of a plausible first work.

Very bad movie

[grechyc · 1/10 · 15 March 2017]

It was a waste of time, the movie sucks. bad acting, weak story, boring. For the every day movie watcher this will be a boring movie. The story about a group of guys painting a line has no point, there is nothing interesting about it. i expected to see something good but that never happened. very disappointed.