Admirable film.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I saw it many years ago but so many of the scenes still resonate with me. Most of all I remember the stunning finale with Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Peña. Chris Cooper deserved an Oscar for that scene alone, it was so powerful yet so sensitive. Great acting of the kind you see so rarely in films these days.

Lone Star is two-thirds of a really good movie. Unfortunately, one- third of it is mediocre melodrama. The two-thirds of the movie that is worth watching is set in a border town in Texas over a period of several decades told through flashbacks. It concerns a corrupt, racist, white sheriff, Charlie Wade, who murders anyone who does not pay him off. One night, after his deputy, Buddy Deeds, confronts him and lets him know that his days of extorting the community are over, the sheriff disappears along with $10,000 of county funds.Years later, some human remains are found in the desert. The present sheriff, Sam Deeds, the son of Buddy, begins investigating. Little by little, the evidence begins to indicate that the bones are those of Sheriff Wade, that he was shot, and that the person who killed him was Buddy. This occurs just as the town prepares for a dedication, The Buddy Deeds Memorial Courthouse, because Buddy is regarded as a hero in that town. Sam never got along too well with his father, and so he is more than willing to let the truth come out, while Mayor Hollis Pogue, former deputy to Wade and then to Buddy, is opposed to Sam's efforts. Hollis does not have much respect for Sam, who he thinks will never measure up to what his father was.Another person sponsoring the dedication is Mercedes Cruz, a respected businesswoman who runs a popular café. She is the mother of Pilar, who used to be Sam's friend in grade school and his girlfriend in high school. However, Buddy did not want Sam dating her, and he kept them apart, which is a major reason Sam resents his father. Mercedes also disapproved of Pilar and Sam going together.As Sam continues his investigation, he finds that Sheriff Wade murdered Eladio Cruz one day because he was smuggling Mexicans across the border without giving Wade his usual bribe. Cruz was fixing a flat tire on his truck, with the illegals in the back, when Wade and Deputy Hollis stopped on the road beside them. Wade asks Cruz if he has a gun in his truck, and when Cruz says he has a shotgun, Wade tells him to get it. When Cruz reaches for the shotgun, Wade shoots and kills him. This way Wade can claim self-defense. Hollis, however, knows it was murder, and he is horrified. It later turns out that Eladio Cruz was Mercedes' husband, giving her a motive for killing Wade.A third person with a strong motive for killing Wade is a black man named Otis. Wade used to shakedown the former owner of a black bar, Roderick, and one night when Otis was a young man, who just started working for Roderick, Wade humiliated him. It finally turns out that the night Buddy told Wade he should turn in his badge and leave town, Wade and Hollis drove over to the black bar to get his usual kickback for letting Roderick continue operating his bar. When Wade discovers that Otis is running a poker game without giving Wade a cut, he beats Otis up. Then he tells him to hand him the revolver that Roderick kept in a cigar box, obviously intending to set him up just as he did Eladio Cruz. But just as Buddy walks through the door, Hollis pulls out his own gun and kills Wade. The three of them decide to cover up the killing. They take the $10,000 in county funds and give it to Mercedes, who has been struggling ever since her husband was murdered. She uses the money to start the café.The night Sam learns about this from Otis and Hollis, he learns something else. Up till then, Sam believed that the reason his father did not want him and Pilar to date was that he did not want his son dating a Mexican. It turns out Buddy had no problem with Anglos and Mexicans crossing racial lines. In fact, he and Mercedes were having an affair. The problem was the opposite of miscegenation. It was incest. Pilar and Sam were brother and sister, at least insofar as Buddy was the father of both. Pilar and Sam had already become lovers again by this time. Since Pilar cannot have children anymore, they decide the incestuous nature of their relationship is not a problem and plan to marry.That is the good two-thirds of the movie. Unfortunately, John Sayles, who wrote and directed this movie, wanted it to be about the three races of this border town, Anglos, Mexicans, and blacks (as this movie terms them), and he wanted the three races to be represented in equal measure. This desire on Sayles' part led him to intersperse the story described above with a story about Otis's son, Colonel Delmore Payne, who is the commanding officer of a local army base.This part of the movie parallels the main part. Payne has conflicts with his father, Otis, much as Sam had conflicts with his father, Buddy. There is also a subplot of miscegenation, in which a white male soldier and a black female soldier talk about getting married. But it all falls flat. It is just routine melodrama. Again and again, just as we are really getting into the main part of the movie, it all grinds to a halt so that the subplot surrounding Colonel Payne can be advanced. Considering that the movie is two hours and fifteen minutes long, a version of the movie that left out this part would have been a shorter but much better movie. This is an example of how art can be spoiled by a preconceived idea, in this case, the idea that the three races of this movie must each be given equal time, instead of allowing as much time as needed to tell a good story.

Remember when mainstream movies came out and there could be a movie that was primarily for the adults in the room? John Sayles is a filmmaker who appeals to people who like dramas that don't talk down, and don't get into major hysterics in melodrama. This kind of approach to characters and situations that develop naturally, intrigue in a real world where, in the case of Lone Star especially, racism is institutionalized even when it isn't spoken of and history repeats itself in subtle ways, and it may not be for those expecting big action or showdowns with lots of violence. In fact one of the only misleading things about the movie is the poster, which, when I was younger passing by the tape in the store (without, ignorantly of course, looking at the back of the cover) I thought it was some oddball Texas horror movie.Maybe in its way it is sort of a horror movie, but more about the terror of secrets meant to be buried like the skull and badge of the long-gone Sheriff Wade (Kris Kristofferson) who we see in flashbacks as a mean SOB s***-kicker who didn't take no guff from no one, whether it was his fellow officer (Matthew McConaughey in a small but great role), or a black or a Mexican. It's in this backdrop that the present-day story unfolds as a mix of murder mystery, political scandal and gladhanding, military hiccups, immigration, and interracial romance, with Chris Cooper as the sheriff in present day finding out thing after thing that makes him more disillusioned.It's easy to say the message of the movie, if it has one, can boil down to "It's all BS and it's bad for ya," but what is so engrossing about Lone Star is how Sayles depicts these people as trying to be good as they can be (the ones we're meant to see as good anyway), and that they have to navigate a lifetime full of discrimination and being apart and being told what to do, whether it's someone who is black or Mexican or a white person trying to be with a Mexican (that too, in its way, is a form of racism). The wounds are so deep that we might as well be skeletons rotting in the sun and it will take a long time, long after those reading this review are gone, to heal.But the good people of this story, or trying to be good anyway also comes down to point of view, which I found fascinating. I liked very much the scene where the younger black woman soldier is in front of the Colonel played by Joe Morton and she's in real trouble over drugs being found in her test. But there's this dialog between them in this scene that breaks down about why they're even in the military, or what they think they're doing there. It's a supporting plot line and yet it's not padding, it's not something unnecessary, it like many other scenes that show how characters act and react to the world around them can't help but be shaped by the place they're in - Good ol' Boy land Texas - and how they navigate through being a minority in this place.Acting across the board is solid (even Frances McDormand, who I almost forgot was in the movie by the time she shows up, gets a scene stealer of a performance to give), and the writing is sharp and trusting of its audience that if it takes its time the rewards will be gradual and satisfying. It's got deep messages about how American life, Mexican life too, functions throughout history, with the "Native Americans" also in the background, but it still functions as entertaining drama that gives every character more than a few moments to feel alive and developed. It's assured filmmaking that we don't get to see much at a studio level anymore.

This is a remarkable film on a number of levels, not the least of which is the startling reveal at the end of the story regarding the relationship between Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) and Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Pena). Additionally, two of the principal characters are already dead and seen only in flashback scenes. I can't recall this device employed in any prior films I've seen, and this adds to the complexity of the story's non-linear narrative.Above all perhaps is the sophisticated writing and direction of John Sayles, who handles the topics of racism and incest in a straightforward but non judgmental manner. I have to say, the ending left me conflicted about the direction the relationship between Sam and Pilar might take. As offspring of the same father, I would have expected there to be a lot more turmoil and conflicted feelings between the two after Sam explains everything he learned about his father's past. The dialog between the characters allows the viewer to reach their own conclusion about where they go from here, though to me it seems they were open to making things work out for themselves.The thing that really jolted me in this story was the person of Sheriff Charlie Wade as portrayed by Kris Kristofferson. I've never seen Kristofferson reach so low in the gutter before to create a character like the former sheriff. He was just vile with no regard for normal decency or human kindness. What happened to Charlie Wade was the lesser of two significant twists in the story. Having set up the viewer to expect that he was killed by former deputy Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), Sayles once again stuns the viewer with the circumstances of Wade's death. Unquestionably, "Lone Star" is masterful story telling with a masterful cast.