Lone Star (1996) on Netflix
Two off-duty sergeants find a skeleton on an Army rifle range with a Masonic ring and a Rio County sheriff's badge. Sheriff Sam Deeds opens an investigation in his Texas border town.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.4/1036,274 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sam Deeds serves as sheriff of Rio County, Texas, in the border town of Frontera, and he works in the shadow of his late father, Buddy, a revered former sheriff. Off-duty sergeants have found a skeleton on an old Army rifle range, and forensics identifies it as Charlie Wade, the corrupt sheriff who preceded Buddy and vanished in 1957 with ten thousand dollars in county funds. Sam opens an investigation, though Mayor Hollis Pogue and other prominent locals warn him off events forty years old. As a teenager Sam loved Pilar Cruz, and now, divorced, he meets the widowed Pilar again. Her mother Mercedes, who once helped separate them, objects again. Colonel Delmore Payne has returned to command the local Army base, estranged from his father Otis, who runs a nightclub.
In these lists: The Best Movies of 1996, 30 Years Later
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lone Star (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director John Sayles cast the then-largely-unknown Matthew McConaughey, whose biggest prior credit was Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, specifically because he wanted an actor without star baggage who could still hold his own opposite Kris Kristofferson.
- Sayles did not want the flashback scenes to have visible cuts to the present-day scenes, so he used pans that kept each transition within a single camera shot, letting them "feel like it was just a flow like time or like a river".
- John Sayles conceived the film after a 1978 trip to Texas, where he shot a cameo for another film and then visited the Alamo; the resulting script blended Western and detective-story elements and, unusually, got funded almost as soon as he wrote it.
- Lone Star was recognized by the American Film Institute in its AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008, where it appeared as a nominated Western film.
