One might not be aware that some schools across the nation ― in the case of this film’s subject, in Texas ― host law enforcement training for those on the precipice of graduation. Over the course of a year, the students that have chosen to participate in this program will learn the ins and outs of becoming police officers and joining paramilitary government institutions like the United States Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (better and more infamously known as ICE). At the Ready more specifically follows the students at Horizon High School in El Paso, Texas, and, even more narrowly, a small handful of specific students whose dream job is occasionally at odds with the political future of the country.
It seems important ― though, of course, it was entirely coincidental ― that much of this story takes place concurrently with the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Horizon High students that populate the center of the story in director Maisie Crow’s documentary are Latinx, either by birth or heritage, and at least one of them has a direct link to the rhetoric of Trump’s year-and-a-half-long campaign to exclude anyone south of the border from fair representation in the United States. The problem, he claimed, was with illegal immigration (argued at his campaign announcement through broadly inflammatory claims about the “kind” of people Mexico was “sending”), but the solution, according to him, was not to be a bureaucratic one. Just as a few of these kids are about to join ICE, the agency was led into a period of even more brutally isolationist tactics than ever.
We see a debate arise about the efficacy of Trump’s eventual plan, which was broadly speaking twofold: to ban travel from Muslim-heavy countries (except, in a bit of irony, from the ones that posed a genuine threat) and to build a great border wall between Mexico and the States. The former measure was instituted within a year of Trump’s inauguration and not lifted in full until the start of the next one. The border wall took quite a bit longer to come to fruition and, though more than 400 miles of it was built, was not completed before Joe Biden took office. The debate about these plans comes down to two views, as basically any debate involving these plans would. Some in the room believe the measures to be necessary for the safety of our country, while others believe them to be fundamentally fascist and, in any case, ineffective by their very nature.
It should be noted, though, that Crow’s film is only political insofar as the backdrop of this story happens to be a political one. We are in divisive times, none more than the previous administration, and here are some teenagers whose view of the solution is to join law enforcement ― an idea that isn’t bad on the surface but that could have no effect in this particular moment in the collective conscience. They are all painfully aware that they are going to be part of the system. What will matter more is how they can affect change when they are a part of that system. What we see of their burgeoning pride and process and attitude is certainly promising.
The structure is simple but, thankfully, never simplistic. Crow follows a small handful of the students around the halls of the school and occasionally back to their home lives. One girl becomes the “commander” of the troop of student officers on the basis of her sense of calm authority in the face of pressure, while another girl, whose beaming smile and bubbly attitude bely her desired career path, trains for the bomb squad. The other student who becomes a focus is a young man whose father was deported back to Mexico after transporting and dealing drugs, and what troubles his son is the fact that he had no reason to do so.
Much of the film is also devoted to scenes of practice and procedure, as the group approaches a competition on a mass scale to determine their readiness for the road ahead. That’s where the heart of At the Ready lies ― in witnessing determined teenagers securing some portion of the future for their own good, no matter what might actually happen on that road.
Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures
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