Lone Star (1996) – Nostalgia Central

John Sayles’s wise and witty study of interconnected lives down by the Texan border with Mexico is about crossing lines, digging up the past, learning lessons, and moving on. It proffers a garrulous gallery of characters, all somehow connected with or investigated by Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) in the dusty (fictional) border region of Rio County after a skeleton and a sheriff’s badge are discovered in the desert just outside of town.

Deeds privately reckons it may have something to do with the ongoing battle his late dad, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey) – for years a crusading lawman and local hero – had with notoriously corrupt and racist gringo sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) several decades previously.

What happened way back then? And how has it affected the present town, with its uneasy mix of whites, Hispanics, and blacks all keen to rewrite history as well as claim the future?

How does the personal affect the political, and vice versa?

Other key characters include Pilar (Elizabeth Peña), Sam’s old Mexican-American high school sweetheart and currently a widowed school teacher; Pilar’s assimilated Hispanic businesswoman mother, Mercedes Cruz (Miriam Colon), who finds herself ashamed of the poor illegals entering Rio County; Sam’s ex-wife Bunny (Frances McDormand of Fargo fame) a comically insatiable football fanatic; assimilated black army officer Delmore “Del” Payne (Joe Morton), unable to communicate with his rebellious son, the black soldiers who regard him as a token, and the father – Otis (Ron Canada), who now runs a roadhouse bar for blacks – who abandoned him.

The characters’ presents and pasts blend together, and there isn’t a weak performance among them.

On the surface, Lone Star might be seen as a cross between a detective story and a modern Western, but it’s more pertinently the kind of kaleidoscopic survey of a society in the process of change at which Sayles has been excelling for years.

Here, however, for the first time, he adds flashbacks (sometimes as private memories, sometimes as shared experience) to include time as an extra ingredient in a heady brew already made up of class, money, sex, friendship, family, and race.

Inevitably, given the border setting, the latter figures heavily in terms of fear, hatred, desire, immigration, job prospects, and prejudice.

Mercifully, Sayles never sermonises, but shows us how things function (or not, as the case may be).

The dialogue is witty and colourful but naturalistic; the performances are excellent throughout; the use of music is characteristically sly and expressive; and Stuart Dryburgh’s camera work eloquently conveys the various allegiances and divisions in the community on view.

Viewers who are willing to pay attention are rewarded with one of the ’90s’ most mature and thought-provoking works, from a uniquely talented filmmaker.

Sam Deeds
Chris Cooper
Buddy Deeds
Matthew McConaughey
Pilar
Elizabeth Peña
Charlie Wade
Kris Kristofferson
Del (Delmore Payne)
Joe Morton
Mercedes Cruz
Miriam Colon
Otis Payne
Ron Canada
Bunny
Frances McDormand
Cliff
Stephen Mendillo
Mikey
Stephen J. Lang
Celie
Oni Faida Lampley
Molly
Eleese Lester
Deputy Travis
Joe Stevens
Amado
Gonzalo Castillo
Enrique
Richard Coca
Hollis
Clifton James
Fenton
Tony Frank
Young Hollis
Jeff Monahan
Priscilla Worth
LaTanya Richardson
Chet
Eddie Robinson
Athena
Chandra Wilson
Shadow
Damon Guy
Principal
Don Phillips
Danny
Jesse Borrego
Paloma
Carina Martinez
Ray
Tony Plana
Ben Wetzel
Richard Andrew Jones
Minnie Bledsoe
Beatrice Winde
Young Otis
Gabriel Casseus
Roderick
Randy Stripling
Jorge
Richard Reyes
Cook
Juan Vega III
Cody
Leo Burmester
Carolyn
Carmen De Lavallade
Young Pilar
Vanessa Martinez
Young Sam
Tay Strathairn
Pete
Sam Vlahos
Anselma
Maricela Gonzalez
Chucho Montoya
Tony Amendola
Eladio
Gilbert R. Cuellar Jr.
Young Chucho
James Borrego
Wesley Birdsong
Gordon Tootoosis
Marisol
Lisa Suarez
Football Announcer (voice)
John Griesemer
Jaime
Eduardo Martínez
Young Mercedes
Azalea Mendez

Director
John Sayles