When bones and a sheriff’s badge are discovered, local sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) goes on the hunt to uncover the dead man’s identity.
The sheriff’s badge leads Sam on a journey to uncovering a mystery that could unpick the myth of his own father, a legendary lawman whose shadow continues to loom large.
I love this movie.
I appreciate Matewan more than I enjoy watching it.
This I love.
Lone Star is a movie about America - its history and its (racialized) idea of itself
It is a story about myths, the way they are made, and the way they can be used:
To create a character, or build a community.
A clear-eyed takedown of the ‘great man of history’ idea, Lone Star is also an incisive movie about families, specifically generations of families, and how the younger generation tries to reckon with their parents.
Chris Cooper’s Sheriff Sam Deeds is forced to wrestle with the idealised image of his father, a sheriff with a mysterious rise to power.
Ironically, the truth about his father (played in flashbacks by Matthew McConaughey) both destroys the legend, and creates a new one, in which the father’s assumed sin is brushed away as a necessary evil.
Chris Cooper is a great actor who I have taken for granted for far too long. After Matewan and this, his quiet, laconic presence feels key to these specific texts.
He becomes Sayles’ avatar of white American masculinity confronting the country’s past sins.
While the film’s scope is epic, Sam’s love story with Pilar (the late great Elisabeth Peña) is one of the many quiet, heartbreaking pleasures of this wonderful picture.
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