Lone Star (1996)

June 21, 1996, release date

Directed by John Sayles

Screenplay by John Sayles

Music by Mason Daring

Edited by John Sayles

Cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh

Kris Kristofferson as Charlie Wade

Matthew McConaughey as Buddy Deeds

Chris Cooper as Sam Deeds

Elizabeth Peña as Pilar Cruz

Clifton James as Hollis Pogue

Ron Canada as Otis Payne

Joe Morton as Delmore Payne

Míriam Colón as Mercedes Cruz

Vanessa Martinez as the teenage Pilar Cruz

Tay Strathairn as the teenage Sam Deeds

Eddie Robinson as Chet Payne

Stephen Mendillo as Sgt. Cliff

LaTanya Richardson as Sgt. Priscilla Worth

Jesse Borrego as Danny Padilla

Tony Plana as Ray

Frances McDormand as Bunny

Oni Faida Lampley as Celie

Eleese Lester as Molly

Tony Frank as Fenton

Gordon Tootoosis as Wesley Birdsong

Beatrice Winde as Minnie Bledsoe

Chandra Wilson as Athena Johnson

Richard Andrew Jones as Texas Ranger Ben Wetzel

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Produced by Castle Rock Entertainment

Lone Star starts right away with mystery: Two men exploring in the desert find a partial skeleton. The discovery raises many questions, of course, but some are personal for Sam Deeds, who is sheriff in a fictional town, Frontera, Texas, that has seen its share of corruption under past sheriffs. One of them was his father. Now Sam must piece together the mystery and discover some facts about his father and his past.

The heat and the desert landscape are features of the locale and part of the story and tension. I would call Lone Star a film brûlant (“burning film”), what others call a film soleil, because the heat is definitely a factor throughout. Washed-out, muted colors and scenery emphasize the gravity of the multiple plot threads and what the past was like for several of the characters. The heat, the desert, and the border between Texas and Mexico can be called characters in the film: All of them define the locale, and the locale defines a lot about the characters. Some of the film’s themes are relevant today, just over twenty-one years after its release.

The use of flashbacks is very effective in Lone Star. The flashbacks are easy, panoramic sweeps of the camera into the past, into characters’ memories that are still so real, still so close. The viewer can almost forget about the transitions because they are so smooth and seamless. The way that the flashbacks are handled makes the narration unusual because they add an almost dreamlike quality to the film. They emphasize characters’ memories in ways that pull the past into the present action of the film, allowing viewers to know that the characters live with their memories every day.

(This blog post about Lone Star contains spoilers.)

The music on the soundtrack emphasizes the mood of the film, which is dark and somber—and also full of longing. Confusion and self-doubt are part of Sam Deeds’s life as the son of Buddy Deeds: He is sheriff in the same town as his father was at one time. His father is the prime suspect after the skeleton is discovered in the desert, and Sam’s investigation becomes entwined with memories of his complicated relationship with his father.

One character, Charlie Wade, is portrayed as truly evil. Fear was part of many people’s lives when Charlie Wade was still alive and working as sheriff. He seemed to know nothing but violence and how to administer it. He’s the driving force behind much of the violence in the town, and he manipulates everyone to bend to his will by abusing his position as sheriff. The other characters are doing the best they can under very unpleasant circumstances.

Fate plays a large role in Lone Star. Some characters are keeping secrets that pervade everything in their current lives. Others are unaware that secrets even exist, and when they learn the truth, the secrets have an impact on their lives. Sam Deeds tries to reconcile his own life with that of his father’s memory, which is kept alive by the townspeople, most of whom remember Buddy Deeds much more fondly than his son Sam does. In fact, Sam left town to escape his past, but he cannot forget the love of his life, and the memories lure him back. The murder in the opening scene sets him on a trajectory that he faces only reluctantly.

The story is rich, and Sayles lets the characters take their time telling their respective stories and reliving their respective memories. He also lets the camera linger so that the mood is established or so that the character can slip easily into a memory (a flashback) to further the plot. Even the supporting characters enrich the story by portraying a complicated view of Frontera, Texas, the fictional town that is the setting of the story.

I saw Lone Star when it was released, and it was a joy to see it again on DVD. I just wish the DVD came with audio commentary from Sayles. I’ve seen several of his films, in the theater and on DVD, and I am always amazed at how he interweaves several plot threads into a cohesive whole. Lone Star is no exception.

Shield for Murder (1954)

August 27, 1954, release date

Directed by Edmond O’Brien, Howard W. Koch

Screenplay by Richard Alan Simmons, John C. Higgins

Based on the novel Shield for Murder by William P. McGivern

Music by Paul Dunlap

Edited by John F. Schreyer

Cinematography by Gordon Avil

Edmond O’Brien as Lieutenant Barney Nolan

Marla English as Patty Winters

John Agar as Sergeant Mark Brewster

Emile Meyer as Captain Gunnarson

Carolyn Jones as Beth, the woman in the restaurant

Claude Akins as Fat Michaels

Lawrence Ryle as Laddie O’Neil (as Larry Ryle)

Herbert Butterfield as Cabot, police reporter for the local newspaper

Hugh Sanders as Packy Reed

David Hughes as Ernst Sternmueller

William Schallert as Assistant District Attorney Andy Tucker

Produced by Aubrey Schenck Productions

Distributed by United Artists

Shield for Murder: Postwar Existentialism and Police Corruption

Shield for Murder is in the public domain, and you can watch it online at the Internet Archive by clicking here.

The film opens at night with a man (Detective Barney Nolan) walking down a rainy street. He grabs a man, bookmaker Perk Martin, and pulls him down Crab Alley. Perk Martin is getting nervous, and with good reason. Nolan shoots Martin in the back and takes the money that he was carrying for his boss Packy Reed. A witness, Ernst Sternmueller, in an upper-level apartment sees Nolan shoot Martin, and then shoot his gun into the air, even though Martin is already dead in the alley. When officers show up to investigate, one of them is Mark Brewster, someone Barney Nolan mentored. Brewster believes Nolan’s story that Perk Martin ran and that Nolan was forced to shoot him.

Cabot, a police reporter working in the police detectives’ room, suspects that Lieutenant Barney Nolan is corrupt. When the officers and detectives return to the station, he reminds Brewster about Nolan’s past: Last year Nolan killed two people in a market burglary. Three years ago, Nolan killed a tramp on Sullivan Street. Now, he has shot Perk Martin with a “shot gone wild.” Cabot also reminds Brewster that Nolan is an expert shot.

(This blog post about Shield for Murder contains spoilers.)

Detective Nolan wants his piece of the postwar American dream. He takes his girlfriend Patty Winters to see a model home that he wants to purchase for both of them with the money that he just stole, and he proposes marriage. While at the model home, Nolan leaves Patty for several minutes to bury the money that he stole from Martin. Patty accepts Nolan’s proposal, but he doesn’t treat Patty very well. She even complains to him that he bullies her friends and coworkers. He’s not a very sympathetic character, and I found it hard to understand why Patty agrees to marry him. Maybe it’s because she is portrayed as young and impressionable. But Detective Nolan treats everyone poorly as he gets more and more desperate. He takes the law into his own hands, and viewers see the extent of his brutality toward witnesses, suspects, and other bookmaker friends of Martin and Reed.

Mark Brewster realizes the inconsistencies in Nolan’s story before Patty does, and he gently questions her about Nolan’s recent activities and whereabouts. She doesn’t want to betray the man she loves, but once she acknowledges the inconsistencies in Nolan’s story, she agrees to help the police detectives find him.

By this time, I was rooting for Patty Winters and Mark Brewster. Nolan may be doomed because of his bad choices, but I was hoping that maybe Patty will realize Mark is the better man. Viewers don’t see any more of this plot thread; they can only infer what might come from the brief interactions between Mark and Patty.

Late in the film, when Detective Nolan is on the run and desperate to leave the country, he goes back to the model home that he showed to Patty Winters to get the stolen money. But he’s met by several officers, including Captain Gunnarson and Detective Mark Brewster, and the police reporter Cabot. Nolan shoots, even though he is vastly outnumbered. The officers return his fire and kill him in front of the model home, where he dies of his gunshot wounds.

Shield for Murder is noir in theme through and through: Nolan and the American dream are dead. At least the dream is dead for Nolan. It might be dead for his girlfriend Patty Winters, too. Maybe I would have felt more dismayed by the film’s ending if I had had any sympathy at all for Nolan. His death is a grim reminder that the American dream—or any dream, for that matter—cannot last if one is caught trying to buy it through murder and robbery. But Shield for Murder is very satisfying: It remains true to the characters and the plot right to the end.

Les cowboys (2015)

May 18, 2015 (Cannes), November 25, 2015 (France), release dates

Directed by Thomas Bidegain

Screenplay by Noé Debré, Thomas Bidegain

Music by Raphaël Haroche

Edited by Géraldine Mangenot

Cinematography by Arnaud Potier

François Damiens as Alain Balland

Finnegan Oldfield as Georges Balland

Agathe Dronne as Nicole Balland

Ellora Torchia as Shazhana

John C. Reilly as the American

Antoine Chappey as Charles

Iliana Zabeth as Kelly Balland

Mounir Margoum as Ahmed

Antonia Campbell-Hughes as Emma

Laure Calamy as Isabelle

Sam Louwyck as the forger

Dani Sanchez-Lopez as the European

Produced by Les Productions du Trésor, Pathé Productions, France 2 Cinéma, Lunamine, Les Films du Fleuve

Les cowboys is a powerful film and worth watching whether you decide it’s a neo-noir or an updated Western. The film has been described as a modern version of The Searchers, a 1956 Western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. I cannot remember where I read this, and I didn’t find anything about it from an online search or from the director Thomas Bidegain’s discussion about the making of the film on the DVD.

The Balland family members attend a country festival in a rural area of France; it’s October 1994—before the September 11, 2001, attacks, which becomes more significant later in the story. Alain Balland, the father, is well known in the community and is asked to sing on stage. After his short singing performance, he dances with his daughter, and viewers see that there is real affection between them. Brief shots show that the same affection exists between all the Balland family members. But before the festival is over, Kelly disappears, and her parents learn some secrets that she has been keeping from them.

In spite of her secrets, Kelly does have something in common with her father: Both of them embrace different cultures wholeheartedly. Alain loves cowboys and country music, distinctly American ideas. The song he sings on stage at the country festival is American, and he sings it in English. Kelly also embraces another culture, but she apparently abandons her native French culture altogether. She leaves France and her family behind to move to another country, and she takes on another identity—permanently. Her approach is more extreme, but she and her father do have this trait in common.

(This blog post about Les cowboys contains spoilers.)

It becomes obvious, before too long, that finding Kelly will be the responsibility of her family, not of the authorities, and they do what they can to find her. Fate plays a large role in the film. The Balland family members left behind after Kelly’s departure did not ask to be put in that situation and must confront its ramifications almost daily. Their confusion and despair form the basis of the angst in Les cowboys. The story centers on the Balland family’s struggles, but they are not the only ones dealing with confusion and angst: The parents of the boy that Kelly leaves with also struggle with doubt and confusion about their son.

Alain Balland is relentless in his search for this daughter. His zeal, although appreciated on some levels, begins to tear his family apart because he is so single-minded about it. Alain and Georges Balland (Kelly’s father and brother, respectively) negotiate illegal dealings for information about Kelly’s whereabouts, which, of course, puts them in danger. When Georges travels to the Middle East as an adult, he is in even more danger. But it doesn’t seem like he will, like he can, give up. The American in the story explains it to Georges Balland with something like this: “You can never go back. Once you have seen a place like this, your home becomes too small for people like us.” Fate is playing its hand the Balland family’s life once again.

I found the story incredibly moving and the characters entirely believable. In fact, I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. And John C. Reilly was fantastic in his part described simply as the American. I have enjoyed Reilly’s acting in many films, and I can add Les cowboys to the list.

The film portrays the main and supporting characters evenhandedly. Yes, some characters perform evil acts, but the main characters are fleshed out, and one cannot say that each character’s decision is either right or wrong. Each character does what he or she feels is best under the circumstances. Expertise, born of persistence and learning on the fly, does triumph eventually, but on the small scale—in the personal world of the main characters. The film does not offer any answers for the grand scale—the global and political backdrop against which the characters are forced to live. It offers a wonderful and moving story that leaves judgments to the viewers.