Lone Star (1996)

Lone Star
Directed by John Sayles
Written by John Sayles
1996/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Castle Rock Entertainment/Rio Dulce
First viewing
#1279 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (combined list – 2013 ver.)
IMDb users say 7.5/10; I say 8.0/10

[box] Otis Payne: It’s not like there’s a line between the good people and the bad people. It is not like you’re one or the other.[/box]

I enjoyed this haunting story about a man coming to terms with his past as he investigates a decades old murder near the Rio Grande.

Nobody in Rio County, Texas has a bad word to say about the late Buddy Deems (Matthew McConanaughey) (“what a real Texan ought to be”) or his wife (“a saint”).  Buddy’s son Sam (Chris Cooper) is not so sure.  When Sam returns to Rio County after a divorce, he is elected sheriff but few think he can fill Buddy’s shoes.

As the film begins, two Army surveyors find a human skull, sheriff’s badge, and Masonic ring on an old firing range.  Later they find a .45 caliber bullet.  Sam becomes convinced that these are remnants of the body of corrupt, vicious ex-sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) who disappeared before his father became sheriff.  Wade was the prototypical redneck bully, particularly targeting blacks and Mexican-Americans.  Sam sets out to prove that Buddy murdered Wade.  His investigation takes him to Mexico and San Antonio. The true story is told during the course of the film in a series of flashbacks.

In the meantime, Sam is also pursuing his now-widowed high school sweetheart Pilar (Elizabeth Peña). Pilar has a complicated relationship with her mother Mercedes who owns a local cafe.  We also follow the story of Otis, who own a saloon catering to African-Americans on the nearby Army base.  Otis’s son, a colonel, has just been appointed commander of the base but has been estranged from his father for years.  Otis’s grandson feels domineered by his spit-and-polish father and longs for a connection with his grandfather.

All these threads are resolved in unexpected ways.

On one level this is a mystery in a Western setting but on a deeper level it is about the pernicious effects of secrets and about inter-generational, interracial and intercultural relations on the Texas-Mexico border.  John Sayles’s Oscar-nominated screenplay cuts deep into the hearts of his characters.  The acting is superb.  I have always been a fan of Chris Cooper and he is outstanding here.  This one snuck by my radar when it was out in theaters and I was very glad to catch up with it.

Trailer, which does not begin to capture the texture of the film