Lone Star (1996)
Directed by John Sayles
When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.
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What critics compared Lone Star to
Hell or High Water isn’t a flashy movie, but it has an undeniably resonant sense of small-scale justice, not to mention an authentic sense of place that will remind you of other Texas-set masterpieces like John Sayles’ Lone Star and the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.
Playing the lawman, Bridges, looking like Kris Kristofferson from “Lone Star,” shines as a plainspoken man grieving the end of his career.
It's all too neat; someone like John Sayles ("Lone Star") could have linked these elements in a far more compelling way.
Interestingly, this is the very opposite of the message of John Sayles' masterpiece, "Lone Star," which told us that, at a certain point, one has to chuck the guilt one inherits and get on with things.
Even better, he flashes the long-dormant promise Hollywood held for him when he burst upon the scene two decades ago in “Dazed & Confused” and “Lone Star.”
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The Lincoln Lawyer steers him back to the dramatic track everyone expected when A Time to Kill and Lone Star were released 15 years ago.
(By comparison, the John Sayles film "Lone Star" also used a murder as a vehicle to explore buried secrets of the past, and the ending emphatically delivered on all of the intrigue built up throughout the film.
As adapted by Karey Kirkpatrick ("Charlotte's Web"), David Berenbaum ("Elf") and John Sayles ("Lone Star," "Honeydripper"), the series of five illustrated books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black have been compacted into one feature length film that dispenses with the river troll and dwarves and relegates the griffin to a cameo.
Somewhere around City of Hope (1991), Sayles became a born-again director; his subsequent efforts, Passion Fish and The Secret of Roan Inish, were near-perfection.
The director's more recent films have moved around the globe, embracing a variety of settings, from the steamy bayous of Louisiana (Passion Fish) and the shores of Ireland (The Secret of Roan Inish) to the Texas/Mexico border (Lone Star).
In fact, many national critics have called "Lone Star" Sayles' best film which is high praise indeed when you consider that his filmography includes "The Secret of Roan Inish," "Matewan," "Passion Fish" and "Return of the Secaucus Seven," among others.
One of several of writer-director John Sayles’s masterpieces —alongside such unforgettable films as “City of Hope,” “Matewan” and “The Secret of Roan Inish” — “Lone Star” is an absorbing neo-Western mystery told in a haunting magical realist tone.