Screen/Society--"Lone Star" (John Sayles, 1996)

LONE STAR
(John Sayles, 1996, 135 min, USA, DCP)

New 4K Restoration

A keen observer of America's social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neowestern mystery. When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence. Sayles's masterful film-novelistic in its intricacy and featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, including Joe Morton, Elizabeth Peña, and Kris Kristofferson-quietly subverts national mythmaking and lays bare the fault lines of life at the border.

"Sayles is able to touch on the humanity of each [character] and the details of the region -- the heat, the beautiful but often unforgiving landscape, and especially the pride of the residents -- are vivid and true." - Austin Chronicle

"John Sayles' LONE STAR contains so many riches, it humbles ordinary movies. And yet they aren't thrown before us, to dazzle and impress: It is only later, thinking about the film, that we appreciate the full reach of its material." - Roger Ebert