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While best known for his cult classics Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, due to some ostracization from Hollywood, director Alex Cox found himself south of the border in the early 1990s. The first film in he made in Mexico, Highway Patrolman, has now received a beautiful new 4K restoration courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Set to open at Film Forum at the end of the month, we’re pleased to exclusively debut not only a new trailer, but the first trailer as the film never received one upon its initial release in 1991. The film tracks the journey of Pedro (Roberto Sosa), our titular character who finds himself up against a burgeoning drug war in Mexico as the law of the land gets blurred.

Regarding the restoration, Alex Cox said, “Highway Patrolman is the first film I directed shot (almost) entirely in long takes…what the Mexicans call “plano secuencia”. It’s the first film I directed in Mexico. It’s the first film I directed where I rigorously followed the script. It’s probably my best film, and I’m delighted that Kino Lorber have given it a new 4K restoration and are bringing it back to the cinemas, in the US and – I hope – Mexico.”

Producer Lorenzo O’Brien adds, “Since Highway Patrolman was written based on the oral accounts of ex-Federal Caminos Alfonso Granados, seeing the new 4K restoration of the film released by Kino Lorber gives us a fairly accurate depiction of Mexico’s developing drug war in the late 1980’s, before the inter-cartel feuds set in. Like the calm before the storm, the film singles out the consequences caused by the festering sore of corruption and drug trafficking on a society at large. Highway Patrolman foretells what was yet to come.”

See our trailer debut below.

Repo Man director Alex Cox went south of the border to film this dramatic tale of a rookie member of Mexico’s national highway patrol, Roberto Sosa, assigned to Nowheresville who struggles to keep on the straight, rejecting corruption and narrow in a department rife with corruption, becoming a South of the Border Serpico. This is a new 4K restoration overseen by the director.

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Highway Patrolman opens on November 30 at Film Forum.

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