The movie "Lone Star" was a very intricate tale of a small town life in the South
of Texas. There were many different subplots in this movie. Dealing mostly with Sam
Deeds, and his past when his father was still alive and sheriff. The movie has many
characters who have created a realistic portrait of a Texas border town, called Frontera,
where in the 1990's people of different ethnicities face difficult social problems as they
come to grips with questions of history, individuality, economic and political power,
culture, and the future of the town.
The one thing I discovered as a whole was that this story had a melting pot of
minorities, characters from the middle and younger generations of three ethnic
communities that eventually uncover and confront the shocking truths about their elders'
past. There is Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), the current Anglo sheriff of Rio County,
brought back by the towns political influence who begins a criminal investigation that
leads him to evidence that his deceased father, the respected and celebrated Sheriff
Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey) was very likely the one who murdered then
Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson).
Even more crucial to Sam is the unearthing that Buddy was an adulterer who
secretly fathered a daughter, Pilar (Elizabeth Pena), who is not only Sam's former high
school sweetheart and current love interest, but also, his half-sister. Chicano Pilar, a high
school history teacher, who discovers her real parentage at the end of the film and is
forced to re-examine her relationship with Sam and newly discovered half-brother. In a
third subplot, a teenage African American boy, the son of Colonel Payne (Joe Morton) at
a nearby military base, finally meets his estranged grandfather Otis and learns that the
family is part Native American and struggles with coming to terms with
...