When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.
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CinemaSerf
7
By CinemaSerf
There are quite a few household names in the starting line up here, but most barely feature as we are introduced to sheriff "Sam" (Chris Cooper). He's the son of the recently deceased sheriff "Buddy" (Matthew McConaughey) and the appreciative townsfolk are about to unveil a monument to this upstanding citizen who was married to a "saint"! Told by way of contemporaneous conversation and flashbacks, the story unravels into a mystery about just what happened to the previous sheriff "Wade" (Kris Kristofferson). Now by all accounts, he was a bully and a violent, corrupt, one at that - until, one night he was faced down by a budding new police officer ("Buddy") and subsequently left town - with $10,000 - and was never seen again. Why is this rearing it's head now? That's because a couple of soldiers from a nearby, and soon to be closed, army base discovered a body buried in the desert and some clues suggest that it might be the long lost lawman. Despite warnings from his friends, and his own reluctance to discover was he thinks might be the truth about his blessed dad, "Sam" starts to investigate and those start to knit together some threads that that the small community had long forgotten - or, certainly wanted to be long forgotten. Auteur John Sayles uses these characters to shine a light on issues of small town community living and it's that that is a little more poignant as this Texan town is within spitting distance of the border from whence the aptly named Mexican "wets" frequently arrive. The story itself isn't really that much to write home about, we've seen these sort of murder mysteries plenty of times before. It's the dynamic that helps this work better. It's slowly paced, but that's engaging. It's part of the methodology of his policing, sure, but it's as much about his own revelations about himself, his father, his friends and his sweetheart "Pilar" (Elizabeth Peña) as this location seas a modern-day changing of the guard that some relish and some abhor. It's not really a western, per se, but it's a characterful look at the effects of change - good and bad - and I reckon probably Cooper's best performance.
