Lone Star
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | John Sayles |
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| Distributor | Turner Home Ent |
| Honors | |
| Writer-director John Sayles’s finest film to date is a sprawling, multilayered exploration of American boundaries—cultural, racial, sexual, temporal—set in a tiny Texas town on (naturally) the border of Mexico. Comparable in scope and detail to such wonderful movies as Nashville, Boogie Nights, or Sayles’s own City of Hope, Lone Star plays like a fertile novel, weaving its numerous characters in and out of its large canvas and repays numerous repeated viewings. Sayles centres this tapestry with a murder mystery and touching romance,… | |
Honors
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Writer-director John Sayles’s finest film to date is a sprawling, multilayered exploration of American boundaries—cultural, racial, sexual, temporal—set in a tiny Texas town on (naturally) the border of Mexico. Comparable in scope and detail to such wonderful movies as Nashville, Boogie Nights, or Sayles’s own City of Hope, Lone Star plays like a fertile novel, weaving its numerous characters in and out of its large canvas and repays numerous repeated viewings. Sayles centres this tapestry with a murder mystery and touching romance, both containing origins rooted in the past. As the film opens, the skeleton of the town’s corrupt, hated former sheriff, Charlie Wade (played in flashbacks with creepy intensity by Kris Kristofferson) is discovered in a nearby desert. While numerous people had reason to kill Wade, the current sheriff (Chris Cooper) believes that his own father, Wade’s beloved successor, did the deed. As he unravels the mystery, he rekindles a love affair with his high school sweetheart (Elizabeth Peña) that forces the couple to relive and repair past scars. Along the way, Sayles veers off on other tangents, introducing more of the culturally divided town’s characters and studying how the past haunts each of their present lives. The ease with which Sayles pulls this fragmented approach together is mesmerising. He effortlessly dissolves flashbacks into contemporary action, thematically mirroring several stories simultaneously. As usual, the performances are passionate but low-key, and Sayles writes his actors natural dialogue that both captures a deep-felt understanding for regional and cultural differences and portrays the lasting effect this has on the town’s citizens. —Dave McCoy
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This complex and rich film by John Sayles stars Chris Cooper as the contemporary sheriff of a Texas border town still under the sway of his late, legendary lawman father (Matthew McConaughey, seen in flashbacks). The discovery of a skeleton and crusted-over badge—buried some 40 years—initiates an investigation into an old crime no one wants to talk about but which will determine for Cooper’s character, once and for all, various truths about his father’s life. Sayles ingeniously sets this mystery against the backdrop of a developing, multicultural community losing its economic base while haggling over a history of racism. The overall effect is of a complicated American tragedy mitigated by the possibility of personal redemption. A terrific experience. —Tom Keogh
