The Fence (2010) User Reviews

interesting topic, but it is a little too short.

[Hunky Stud · 7/10 · 31 May 2018]

This is a pro-illegal immigrants documentary.

Now that trump wants to build the wall. it is interesting to watch this documentary which was released more than 8 years ago. but it looked as if it was just made for trump supporters. it showed some interesting facts.

i am surprised to learn that some of those walls were already tall, deep and strong. it is also interesting to learn that some of the walls have openings between, so people can just cross at those "entrances" easily.

it brings up an interesting point about animal migrations. animals don't have citizenship, they should be able to cross the border anytime they want. then those border places are well populated already, so the animals which live there are not really exotic animals. so it should be ok if some of them can't cross the border any more.

i want to say that there are many more people from other parts of the world who want to come to usa illegally, but they can't because there are big oceans. so if we let illegals crossing the border easily, then shouldn't we give equal opportunities to asians, africans who want to come to usa illegally, too? why should we only give preference to mexicans and south americans?

The pointlessness of it all

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 5 March 2017]

"The Fence" is a 35-minute documentary from 2010, so this one is already over five years old, but it couldn't be about a more current subject. We'll get to that later though. Director, producer and narrator is Rory Kennedy, at that point already an Emmy winner, but not yet an Oscar nominee. The writer is Mark Bailey, another Emmy nominee. I believe, even if this short documentary tends to get a bit too gimmicky and entertaining at times for a film on such a serious subject, it is still a decent watch and has some informative moments that underline the pointlessness of the entire project of a fence between the United States and Mexico. The first one is already the most relevant, namely how there are huge areas without a fence between the country and it seems to be fairly random where you find the fence. Or is there a purpose? I am not sure. Maybe they should have elaborated on that instead of telling us about how illegals dig through or climb over the fence at ease. What's the point of that, if there are miles and miles without any fence at all. So yeah, from the content perspective, there are major flaws with this documentary. Another one I found pretty annoying is how one-sided it all it. Seriously, it's understandable that you can only examine so much in under 40 minutes, but the liberal/democratic bias is unbearable at times here. Okay Bush greenlit the fence, but why didn't they tell us what Obama did or didn't do about this issue. The film really manipulates the audience at times. Now about the relevance I mentioned earlier: Lets hope that if Trump really builds his wall it will be a more thought-through project without all these flaws we see basically in this documentary here. It exposes many areas where they shall not fail again. But even with that approach, I just cannot find myself liking this one enough to recommend seeing it. You find the exact reasons above. I have to give the outcome here a thumbs-down as it is majorly flawed in terms of essential aspects every documentary filmmaker should pay attention to.