LONE STAR (PG-13)
Director: John Sayles
Stars: Chris Cooper, Ron Canada, Clifton James, Elizabeth Pena, Joe Morton,
Matthew McConaughey, Kris Kristofferson, Frances McDormand, Stephen J Lang, Miriam Colon, Richard Coca, Jeff
Monahan, LaTanya Richardson, Leo Burmeister, Gordon Tootoosis
Running Time: 136 minutes.
This richly scripted and multi-layered murder mystery encompasses a number of complex, unresolved father-son relationships.
Lone Star easily ranks as one of best films from independent director John Sayles, in an impressive career in which he has
passionately chronicled the uncertainties of life in America during the 20th century.
Lone Star is set in Frontera, a small border town in the south of Texas that overlooks the Rio Grande, but Sayles suggests that
the border is just as much psychological as it is physical, dividing families as well as separating the past from the present. Sam
Deeds (Chris Cooper) is the sheriff of Frontera, but he is painfully aware that he was mainly elected on the strength of his
family name - his father Buddy (Matthew McConaughey, recently seen in A Time To Kill) was a tough but fair sheriff whose
memory is still revered by the older townsfolk. However, Sam's personal perspective of his late father is coloured by his own
painful memories of a racist and brutal man.
When a skeleton is discovered on the abandoned rifle range of the nearby army base, it opens up a number of unresolved and
painful scars and unearths a few forgotten family secrets. Forensic evidence suggests that the skeleton is that of Charlie Wade,
a tough and corrupt former sheriff who ruled Frontera with an iron fist and had a piece of all the graft within the town before he
was run out of town forty years ago by Buddy. Buddy becomes the chief suspect as far as Sam is concerned, and he soon
becomes caught in a crisis of conscience, torn between his duty as a sheriff and consumed by his uncertain and uneasy
relationship with his late father.
On the periphery of this main narrative strand are the stories of a number of other families and characters, who are all trying to
resolve their own personal dilemmas and relationships and come to terms with the events of their past. Colonel Payne (played
by Sayles regular Joe Morton) has returned to the town of his birth to oversee the closing down of the local army base, and he
is reluctant to seek a reconciliation with his own father Otis (Ron Canada), who runs a local bar for black folk. Payne is also
having a tough time in coming to terms with his own teenage son. And then there is Pilar (Elizabeth Pena), the recently
widowed local school teacher, who had an adolescent crush on Sam before the pair were deliberately driven apart by Buddy
for unexplained reasons.
Past and present collide, and not even Sam could see where his unwanted probing of a forty year old mystery would lead him.
The echoes of the distant past are put into startling new perspective by the revelations of Sam's investigation. The film also
explores contemporary issues of racism and nationalism through one subplot that examines the lot of the Mexican illegal
immigrants who sneak into America, determined to escape the abject poverty of their own lives and make a new start.
Sayles has assembled one of the richest and most impressive ensemble stars to flesh out the characters, and even the smaller
roles are played to perfection. Cooper, who has worked with Sayles previously, suggests the complex emotions that confront
Sam, torn between the past and the present, and he makes the character a flawed and vulnerable man who ultimately gains
some sort of redemption in learning the truth. Cast against type as the vicious Wade, Kris Kristofferson is marvellously sinister
and hard as steel, with an evil glint in his eyes and a cold smile that is chilling. McConaughey is suitably low key as Buddy but
he projects the right combination of honesty and quiet strength; while Frances McDormand makes the most of her small
cameo as Sam's ex-wife, a flaky football fanatic; and veteran Clifton James is suitably ambivalent as the mayor who knows
more than he is prepared to admit.
Lone Star is a long film, but it is absorbing and fascinating stuff and never boring - the lengthy running time never outstays its
welcome, and there is no sense of unnecessary padding or wasted moments within the multi-layered structure. Sayles
seamlessly cuts between flashbacks of past events and the present with smooth dissolves, giving the narrative an uninterrupted
flow; this cinematic device also suggests the way in which the past impacts on the present and shapes events, often in subtle
and unnoticed ways. His direction is unobtrusive, giving the film a suitably low key atmosphere. Stuart Dryburgh's marvellously
evocative cinematography suffuses the film in soft brown hues that perfectly captures the dry and dusty settings and adds a
touch of nostalgia to the flashback sequences.