The Shepherd: Border Patrol
The Shepherd: Border Patrol
| 04 March 2008 (USA)
The Shepherd: Border Patrol Trailers

A Texas cop battles ex-navy seals who are trying to traffic drugs from Mexico into the USA.

Reviews
Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
SnoopyStyle Former New Orleans cop Jack Robideaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) starts a new border patrol job in Columbus, New Mexico. He is haunted by his past. The area is overrun by human smugglers and drug runners. On top of which is a group of American ex-Special Forces returning from Afganistan involved in smuggling heroin and explosives.This is the border issue being handled with as much care as one expects from a Van Damme movie. There is a lot of kung fu kicking. The story doesn't really make sense. I don't know why anybody would bother with the suicide vest. What's the point of the weaponized priest bus? None of it has any reality. The production is lower quality. This is a B-movie without any fun or any tension.
Theraxorterminate I really had no interest of taking a look at this movie, but my grandfather insisted to take a look and too be honest I didn't really like it. First of all I have a strange question to ask when was this movie really made? It doesn't look like it was in 2008 but more like it was made in the 90's with a TV feeling instead of cinematic.Anyway I gave it a chance if it really was a go, but I couldn't really go on so good. It was actually pretty boring and not a lot of action to offer. The story was rather simple and didn't really deliver anything special. OK but I understand that this movie was not meant to be Oscar worthy and was meant for entertainment but I just didn't find it interesting at all.The story wasn't really that good or interesting it doesn't deliver much originality and the drug thing and the bombs became too tedious and it seemed like suddenly anyone didn't care for it anymore. Although I gotta say that the final fight was the only interesting part of the whole movie and the acting wasn't abysmal it is better than mediocre but nothing that blew me away.This movie wasn't really my cup of tea, it's a movie that will please the fans of JCVD but if you're looking for an interesting action movie this might not be for you. I thought the whole movie was predictable from beginning to the end. Nothing really special in my opinion.
dee.reid Some people will notice that since Belgian-born martial arts star Jean-Claude Van Damme, who was at the peak of his Hollywood popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, retreated to the direct-to-video route in the early 21st century, that some of his movies have gotten progressively better, both in terms of his acting abilities and the increased realism of his martial arts hand-to-hand combat sequences.2001's "Replicant" is one example. "In Hell" (2003) is another. 2008's "The Shepherd: Border Patrol" is the latest of his that I've seen. The single best film Van Damme has ever done in his entire career is "JCVD" (2008); while not a true action movie in the usual sense, his performance in that film is worthy of an Oscar nomination ("Time" Magazine said so at the time - I'm just confirming it). I was also quite pleased with his villainous turn in "The Expendables 2" (2012) when I saw that earlier this month.But back to "The Shepherd: Border Patrol." In the film, which is competently directed by Isaac Florentine, Van Damme plays Jack Robideaux, a former New Orleans police officer who has just transferred to the U.S. Border Patrol agency in New Mexico. Carrying along with him his pet rabbit (also named Jack), he knocks heads with the sexy no-non-sense Border Patrol commander, Captain Ramona Garcia (Natalie J. Cobb), and soon finds himself at war with a team of rogue ex-U.S. Special Forces commandos-turned-mercenaries working with a Mexican drug cartel just across the U.S.-Mexico border. And it is later revealed that Robideaux has a personal vendetta against the mercenaries and the cartel."The Shepherd: Border Patrol" is not a bad film at all. Like I said earlier, the film is worth noting for a noticeably more dramatic performance from Jean-Claude Van Damme, and fight scenes that are more realistic and lack the flashy glitter of the fight sequences from his earlier Hollywood heyday. Since Van Damme was 47 at the time of the film's release, he is still remarkably well kept-in-shape, and can still hold his own against the legions of bad guys in his way. And he is still arguably one of the best screen kickers out there. His greatest fight sequence, of course, will be his climatic showdown with mercenary henchman Karp (Scott Adkins, who also appeared as Van Damme's chief henchman in "The Expendables 2"). That scene alone will be worth the price of the DVD.As a direct-to-video effort, "The Shepherd: Border Patrol" contains better-than-usual production values, since these types of movies are usually quickly, and cheaply, made, and typically it shows. This looks like it did not have a real big budget behind it, but Isaac Florentine obviously put forth some effort to make the movie look good and cast actors capable of putting on decent performances and staging really cool-looking action scenes.In other words, it's a worthy straight-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme effort that proves that he still has what it takes to deliver the action.7/10
Frank Markland Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a border guard forced to fight Mexican drug runners in this adequate martial arts actioner that finds Van Damme in good form, and that has some really good fights. I'm not sure if this is Jean-Claude Van Damme's best direct to DVD effort but it certainly feels like it. The plot is of course negligible, the characters are thin as paper and the story is just an excuse to have Van Damme kick butt and showcase his martial arts. For a fan of such Shepherd:Border Patrol works as what it sets out to do, and it succeeds in a Bloodsport/Kickboxer/Universal Soldier way.In other words it feels like an late 80s/early 90s Van Damme flick and I was happy with such. Indeed Van Damme's one on one with Scott Adkins is great, the action is exciting and I had a lot of fun with this movie. This isn't of course as good as JCVD or even Bloodsport, Kickboxer and Universal Soldier, but it is Van Damme's most fun outing in a long time and Van Damme forgets the over the top melodrama (In Hell and Until Death) to deliver non-stop martial artistry. Sure the movie is stupid, but the pace is fast and it really does feel like a classic Van Damme movie, and really what's much better than that?* *1/2 Out Of 4-(Pretty Good)
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