Somewhere in the 2010s, the filmmaker previously defined as much by his industriousness as his intelligence started to slow down, but before that, the Schenectady-born novelist turned director was one of the most vital voices in American cinema, steadily cultivating a body of work that served as a workable model for other DIY-minded types. More specifically, John Sayles hasn’t made a movie in almost a decade, since 2013’s underseen-and, even by the indie stalwart’s thrifty standards, seriously microbudget-drama Go for Sisters. (Sam doesn’t smile when he looks at it.) And while there’s nothing necessarily mold-breaking about Lone Star’s basic setup or style-certainly not when compared to other entries in the modern neo-noir cycle, bookended in the ’80s and ’90s by the Coens’ Blood Simple and Fargo-its qualities of thoughtful, hard-edged sociological storytelling and analysis are currently in short supply. Over and over throughout the movie, Sam listens patiently while old-timers tell him that they “broke the mold” when they made his dad-the man has been immortalized in a bronze statue outside city hall. ![]() Twenty-five years later, Lone Star is as much of a relic as the bleached remains that figure into its stark, mysterious cold open: a fluid, literate, and politically complex (as opposed to programmatic) independent American movie that respects its audience’s intelligence and fulfills an appetite for moral, intellectual, and ideological ambiguity. The film got the acclaim it deserved, including an Academy Award nomination for its original script, but didn’t claw its way into the canon like its Oscar-night rival Fargo, a movie with more of a flair for the absurd that could nevertheless be its bizarro twin. It was a tricky, noir-tinged Western steeped in swift, glancing allusions to cultural, military, and filmic history. In 1996, Lone Star felt like a self-conscious throwback by a filmmaker who’d made a career of hopping between genres. As the film opens, the character is contemplating abandoning his post, but after some old bones are unexpectedly exhumed in the desert, Sam finds himself growing naturally into the role he’d rejected-and learning more than he’d like to know about the good, bad, and ugly particulars of his hometown. Sam’s campaign slogan-“One Good Deeds Deserves Another”-leaned heavily on the idea of family branding, but there’s no shade for a prodigal son in his daddy’s shadow, and no future either. After initially departing the parched Texan border town of Rio County for the greener pastures of San Antonio, Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) returned to run for sheriff on the strength of his DNA back in the 1960s, his father Buddy (Matthew McConaughey) was a local hero, flashing an untarnished golden badge and an easy, matinee-idol smile as emblems of state and moral authority. Lone Star centers on a hero navigating that hypothetical divide like a high-wire act-a cop on a thin-blue tightrope. ![]() “It’s not like there’s a line between the good people and the bad people.”
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