Lone Star
Reviewed by James Slone

“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” - Otis Payne.

“Lone Star” (1996) has the title of a western and the stark outline of the police procedural. Of course, it’s neither. Directed by John Sayles at the top of his game, the film is anything but what the superficial details would lead you to think. “Lone Star” is one of the great ensemble dramas, a rich textured story full of the complexity of life and the bright color of genuine people. It’s a mystery, though not one content to merely see a case to its end, but one of history, ideas, relationships and the secrets people carry to their graves. It’s also a political film, though one that sees beyond polemic, reaching into the daily lives of living, recognizable people, even those most of us would find repugnant. There is one irredeemable monster in the film and it’s the past.

Sheriff Sam Deeds (a low-key and naturalistic Chris Cooper) is a reluctant lawman in a small, ethnically diverse Texas border town. His father (Matthew McConaughey) was a legend in his time, dispensing justice that everyone, white, black or chicano, could agree on. Sam’s relationship with him wasn’t the closest or most amiable and as sheriff he’s had trouble reconciling himself with the enshrined memory of his father.

At the start of the film, a skeleton is discovered in the desert with a worn down badge and a Masons ring. Sam opens up an investigation and discovers that the corpse might be Charlie Wade (a brutally cold Kris Kristofferson), the sheriff who once reigned supreme in town before disappearing. Sam’s father was his deputy. Murder is suspected and Sam begins his search for the truth.

“Lone Star” could have just been a procedural, where we watch Sam interrogate a number of characters in hopes of solving the case and distributing justice. But the mystery isn’t the main focus; it’s simply the method Sayles uses to show the complex social relations, passions and prejudices that give the town its identity. There is not one but many mysteries and when they’re exposed we learn about this place, its history and its meaning to the people who live in it. Never has a richer ensemble been put together and with such purpose. There might be more star studded casts, but I can’t recall one that seems more natural or authentic.

The characters we’re introduced to have their own stories, their own texts, and are not simply ornaments hanging on a schematic plot. There’s Otis Payne (Ron Canada), the owner of the one bar in town that caters to blacks and the only joint that has since Jim Crow. He’s called the “mayor of darktown,” a title that seems like just another racist epithet until you realize what he means to his community. His son (Joe Morton), a colonel at the local army base, resents his father for being distant, and in his estimation, a low figure, and pushes his own son to follow in his footsteps by shutting the boy’s grandfather out. He seems unsympathetic, but revelations throughout the film make him understandable. There is a scene between him and a young black private one screw up away from poverty that reveals a tender, sad humanity.

Then there’s a highschool history teacher, Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Peña), who once went out with Sam when they were teenagers only to have the racism- among other things- of the time tear them apart. In an early scene, we see her passionately pleading with the school board to keep a text book that offers a Tejano perspective on the Texas Revolution only to be shouted down by an Anglo woman who wants it whitewashed- though of course won’t admit her prejudice. Pilar has her own kids from a failed marriage, an obedient daughter and a rebellious son. When Sam is around she lights up. But she’s cautious, warily entering into subtle courtship, taking those practiced steps with the unease a real woman in her position would.

Her mother, Mercedes (Miriam Colon) is a restaurant owner who makes it a point to behave as a “respectable” Anglo member of society, demanding that her workers speak English and calling the border patrol on some “wetbacks.” But things are not so simple and we discover that her hard exterior hides affecting secrets. We also meet Sam’s ex wife, Bunny (Frances McDormand), a deeply troubled woman with a manic football obsession, a chicano politico Jorge (Richard Reyes), and the town’s affable mayor (Clifton James), who likes to fish bass on the lake and hides a few uncomfortable facts behind a cheerful facade. In the course of his case, Buddy also crosses the border to talk to a Mexican with some outspoken opinions about his neighbors to the north.

And blowing above the locals like a foul wind from the past are Sam’s father, Buddy Deeds, and Charlie Wade. If Buddy Deeds is generally considered a peacekeeper it is largely because his predecessor was so completely ruthless. Sheriff at the height of Jim Crow segregation, Charlie is the worst kind of authority figure, above the law and abusive with the powerless. He bullies his way through his work, a law enforcement officer who invents the law as he goes along. So deep is his racism and sense of entitlement that he waits for an excuse to distribute mock justice with boot and gun, targeting chicanos and blacks not only to keep them down but because he’s a sadist who revels in his position of power. Kristofferson is absolutely fierce, and horrifically believable, in the role.

Buddy is thought of as heroic in the community because he apparently kept the peace without overstepping his bounds. But as he investigates the death of Charlie Wade, Sam discovers that his father was a also a political conniver, who used more official methods to exercise power and leave the minorities impotent in their ghettos. But as with most characters in Sayles’ films, he’s a complicated human being and not unsympathetic. Sam might remain ambivalent about his father, but he gains a more complete and fair picture of him. He’s fleshed out. I use the present tense to describe characters in the story’s past because they’re so much a part of the present. Flashbacks don’t occur in their own secluded scenes, but are meshed effortlessly into the present.

Sam’s town lives under the long shadow of the past. Many of the characters are living history, embedded in the stories that made the present town what it is. Paloma, Otis, and the mayor are actual relics from an earlier era when the law was whatever the white man decided it was, when discrimination and lynching were still facts of life in the American south. And lest we forget, Jim Crow was not only used against blacks, but was also used liberally against Mexican-Americans, even ones who have lived in Texas since the Mexican-American War. Charlie Wade represents those ancient excesses. And as times have changed so has law enforcement, and Sam is understandably the most enlightened sheriff. But there are those in the film who long for the good old days and the “justice” of the gun.

Indeed, this town, like any town, cannot remove itself from the past. Everyone has an unresolved story and ghosts linger. Racism is not as openly virulent as it once was, but now takes the guise of official history and patriotism. Chicanos are now allowed in City Hall, but whole swaths of their history is being demolished for development (a new prison no less) and many are behind bars. Blacks might be equals on the army base, but off-base white resentment lingers and they’re reduced to hanging out in the same old bar. Many things are better, not as blatantly toxic as before, but the verdict is still out on the town. A town, I should add, as real and complicated as any presented in literature.

The town is the main character of the film. The central mystery is resolved and we see Sam learn something about the past that changes much of his perception about it. A wonderful love story evolves between Sam and Pilar, as real and sensitive as any I can recall. There are some tidy resolutions, though I would never go as far to use the word “ends,” and many of the film’s questions are answered to our satisfaction. But somehow the town we leave seems to go on, its struggles and ghosts lingering on into the future. Its story will go on forever. But at least at the end of the movie a few ghosts are finally buried.

“Forget the Alamo,” is the film’s final spoken statement, and a perfect coda for this masterpiece of personal history.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 2:53 am and is filed under Classic Films. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.