Review: Lone Star - A Perfect Little Movie

Last night Tammy and I had a great time watching John Sayles' mostly-overlooked masterpiece from 1996, Lone Star. For her, I think it was the third or fourth time seeing it; I'm pretty sure I've watched it at least six times by now, in a little over a decade, with the last viewing being sometime within the past year.

The film, which is written, directed and edited by Sayles, is ostensibly a whodunit with the detective work happening forty years after the murder. The story opens with a pair of men unexpectedly coming across a skull, half-buried in a cactus field that had decades earlier served as an army firing range. When the Rio County authorities are called in, one of the first clues to the identity of the deceased that's found is what appears to be a heavily-corroded Sheriff's badge. As you might imagine, that amps up the interest level in the case among the local law enforcement in a heartbeat. As it happens, the area's most infamous Sheriff, Charlie Wade, had "left town suddenly" forty years earlier, making the identification of the body a mere formality: it is, indeed, Wade's remains that are dug out of the ground, pushed up over the years from a burial spot four feet deep. Unless he "hopped the fence, dug down into the dirt on the old firing range, and had a heart attack," current Sheriff Sam Deeds says, then it was murder. Since Sam's father, Buddy Deeds, had been a deputy under Wade, and then was made sheriff after Wade disappeared, Sam can't help but wonder if maybe his recently-deceased parent wasn't responsible for the killing. Not that Wade hadn't made dozens of enemies, with his racist approach to law enforcement in a Texas county largely populated by Mexicans and blacks. But it's the present day Sheriff Deeds' job to find out who killed the man.

That's the setup, and the top layer of Lone Star concerns itself with the murder mystery. I think if I'd been a teenager when I saw it for the first time, that's probably what I would've taken away from it. By the time it's over, you know who killed Charlie Wade, and you know why. And that's about 10% of what Lone Star has to offer the discerning viewer.

This is a film that has so much complexity built into it that I marvel over Sayles' ability to make it all look so easy. Now, I don't mean "complex" as in "hard to follow" or "too cerebral." Rather, Lone Star has exactly as much sophistication as you're willing to take away from it. And in my experience that's pretty rare in movies.

I'm sure I still haven't come close to plumbing its depths yet, because I find new things in it every time I watch it, but here are just some of the additional layers I've noted in it over the years. First, it's a tale about father-son relationships, played out between two generations of Deeds (who we almost never see together), three generations of black Paynes, and even a couple of mother-daughter dynamics that are slyly included for contrast. As is typical of a John Sayles screenplay, none of the relationships are black-and-white; despite there being lots of tension, no one's completely right or unequivocally wrong. And again and again we're reminded of the aching distance between a child's view of their parent and the reality of that parent's life. As just one example, modern day Sheriff Deeds has been carrying around unresolved anger toward his father for an incident twenty years earlier, and only through the course of his investigation does he learn the reason for it. And even then, as much as he may be able to understand why his father did what he did, he still can't really bring himself to forgive him.

Another dimension to the story involves legends, and their relationship to reality. Through the use of flashbacks, as well as stories told by those who were there, we slowly become familiar with the larger-than-life myths of Sheriffs Wade and Deeds (Senior), despite both being dead by the time the story begins. One man recounts a memory from when he was a boy: "I remember Charlie Wade come to my father's hardware store once. I was just a little boy. But I'd heard stories about how he'd shot this one, and he'd shot that one. The man winked at me. I peed my pants."

Before long, via the artful use of flashbacks, we also see the famous Charlie Wade wink, usually preceding the cold-blooded killing of some illegal immigrant or minority who "didn't know his place." With that sort of man holding the area in his iron grip of fear for years, is it any wonder that the exploits of his successor — maybe killer? — took on such epic proportions in the years following Wade's disappearance. In fact, the county is about to unveil a new statue dedicated to Sheriff Buddy Deeds, and his son Sam is expected to speak at the ceremony. Sam thinks his father's reputation is all myth, and seems quietly determined to tarnish the man's name as payback for the falling out they'd had years earlier. Talking to one of Buddy's old friends, Sam says, "People have worked this whole big thing up around my father. If it was built on a crime, they deserve to know. I understand why you might want to believe he couldn't do it" to which the older man replies, "An' I understand why you might want to think he could!"

As each new revelation comes out, though, we discover right along with Sam the truth about ol' Buddy Deeds, and that he was neither the saint that the town remembers him as nor entirely the sinner that Sam took him to be. In fact, he was simply a man, who tried to do the right thing in some difficult situations, and also made some poor choices, like men sometimes do.

If Charlie Wade was a bigot — and he was — then he wasn't alone in Rio County, as that topic's explored again and again in Lone Star. Racism is rampant in the town, as Mexicans, Blacks and Anglos are all crammed together with little in common and no love lost between them. Mexicans make up the majority of the population, but are only just beginning to get any representation in local government as the story begins. The Black population is all gathered in one area — "Darktown" — and has been for as long as anyone can remember. One of the dozen or more subplots involves a young female army private — familiar to Grey's Anatomy viewers as "the Nazi" aka Dr. Bailey — who, after failing a drug test and facing expulsion from her way out of an inner city upbringing, gives a frighteningly-insightful explanation as to why she thinks the white 'authorities' let African-Americans like her into the Army: "Because they got people to fight, y'know, Arabs, yellow people, whatever. Might as well use us."

Meanwhile a group of local parents are meeting to complain to some of the teachers about the curriculum being taught to their children. The whites don't like the more liberal view being presented about how the land was 'settled', while the Hispanic parents want more material representing their own heritage. One of the teachers calmly explains that they're "just trying to present a more complete picture..." prompting a redneck mother to exclaim, "And that's what's got to stop!"

Incidents like that are woven all through Lone Star, with no easy solutions offered up. As Tim always like to note, a hilarious line is delivered as two men discuss the impending marriage between a white man and a black woman. The woman's parents were convinced she must be a lesbian, when she hadn't married by the time she hit thirty. Now they're just relieved to find that she's going to marry a man, whatever his colour, prompting one of the pair to comment, "It's always heart-warming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice!"

And the exquisite dialogue truly provides another layer to the experience, as Sayles' ear for the ring of truth has never been stronger. When one of the characters is describing her reaction following her young husband's death, she says, "When Fernando died, it was so sudden. I kind of went into shock for a while. Then I woke up and... there was the rest of my life and I had no idea what to do with it." At another point, an old Indian who'd known Buddy Deeds in his wild youth is asked to come up with a name from his past, and instead of answering, he simply says, "At my age, you learn a new name, you gotta forget an old one." And Sam's "high-strung" football-obsessed ex-wife, in a wacky cameo by Frances McDormand, describes the extensive — and invasive! — research that an NFL team performs on a potential top draft pick. "They've been going over it for months, with their experts and their computers. Doctors' reports, coaches' evaluations, highlight reels, psychological profiles... Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they collected stool samples on these boys, had them analyzed. All to pick a football player for your squad. Compared to that," she concludes, "what you know about a person when you get married to them doesn't amount to diddly, does it?" And by this point in the proceedings, we understand the implication: not only was she a little crazy when Sam married her, but he'd never really committed to their relationship because he was still in love with someone else. But neither of them had a clue, unlike those NFL scouts and their doctors!

Even considered on purely technical terms, Lone Star employs some amazing scene transitions, especially in key moments where the action moves between the present and the past, and back again. It's not done in an artsy, look-at-how-clever-I-am way, but rather in the manner most likely to go unnoticed unless you happen to watch for it.

Central to the story, and largely ignored up to this point in the review, is a love story interrupted. A pair of teenagers, one Mexican and one white, had their inter-racial romance forbidden by their respective parents. This Romeo and Juliet — Texas-style — allowed their love to be thwarted; but now, many years later, they've met up again, one a widow and the other divorced. Still living under the shadow of their oppressive parents, they're hesitant about rekindling that old flame, and that story forms yet another subplot running through Lone Star. In a scene that threatens to take your breath away if you've connected at all with the characters — if your heart isn't made of stone — one of them says, "So that's it? You're not going to want to be with me anymore?" making the pause before the other person answers seem much, much longer than the five or six seconds it really is.

And those are just a few examples of what's playing out in this amazing film. I haven't even mentioned the acting yet, which features Oscar-worthy performances by Chris Cooper as Sam Deeds, Elizabeth Pena as Pilar Cruz and Kris Kristofferson as Charlie Wade. Each of them is note-perfect in roles that are both demanding and absolutely critical to the story. Even young Matthew McConaughey commands the screen in his few scenes as Sheriff Buddy Deeds. Sayles seems to always get the best out of whoever he casts, and Lone Star is the epitome of that. This film made me a Chris Cooper fan long before most people had ever heard of him.

If you've never seen this film, do yourself a favour and pick it up at your favourite rental location. I call it a "little" movie because it doesn't have any explosions, car chases, or A-list movie stars, not because it's small in stature. As Tammy commented, there isn't a wasted scene in it, and everything — and I mean everything — ties together by the time it's finished. In fact, it's quite simply one of the best films I've ever seen.

Rating: **** (which doesn't do it justice)