Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

gogoschka-1 John Sayles' best film: amazing, epic story; beautifully told in elegant flashbacks, featuring Chris Cooper in one of his best roles. A film of stunning beauty and humanity - and also very entertaining. 9 stars out of 10.In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites: imdb.com/list/ls070242495

piedbeauty37 Great acting by Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Matthew McCounaghy, and Kris Krostofferson help make this movie into the fine viewing experience it is.Chris Cooper, playing Sam Deeds, is seeking to know how a skeleton found on a old firing range is connected to his late father, Buddy Deeds. Buddy is a legend in the Southwestern Texas town.The atmosphere with Mexicans, blacks, illegals, white townspeople all in the mix, is great. You feel like you are there experiencing the tensions and clash of cultures good and bad.The mystery builds and with it a fantastic love story with an unexpected plot twist.Highly recommended. John Sayles has created a masterpiece here.

Olivia Daimler I won't try to describe how wonderful this film is, because other reviewers have done a better job. Just reading the reviews of others similarly moved--CHANGED dare I say (I do daresay, because I am given to hyperbole) by this film causes a big lump of feeling to grow in my throat, and I don't really have much more to say except to lend my voice to pumping up how important it is to watch this "little" film. This "little" movie is so perfectly, astonishingly human, it encapsulates so much pain, feeling, experience, I am a big ol' wordsmith but this is the kind of thing that makes me stop typing, because it is so beautifully painfully real that after watching I find my words dried up. Because even if it is a specific story about a specific time and specific people, it manages to encapsulate human lives with a painfully--AND I MEAN PAINFULLY--beautiful universal story. I can't think of another film that I get choked up even by reading about, and I am a cold hard cookie. Sayles is gifted. But if you are turned off by adoration for a director, skip that sentence, please, because this tiny long beautiful story WILL affect you. And make you think and feel and all sorts of dumb stuff maybe you thought you were too hard for, especially in an "old" and even slightly dated film. There is the kind of familiar beauty in this that you won't find anywhere.And of course, forgive me for saying, but Chris Cooper is brilliant in this, he is the actor you have seen in a million things but didn't realize it because he dissolves himself completely in EVERY role, because he is the ultimate in admirable acting: you don't even recognize how many things you have seen him in, most likely, because he is ZERO PERCENT about recognition and 100% about the craft. Look him up and be blown away at the things he has been a-feckin-mazing in and you didn't even KNOW it was the same actor, that's how far he immerses himself in his roles!

ShootingShark Sam Deeds is the son of a late but much beloved Texas county sheriff who has inherited his father's job. But when a body is dug up from forty years ago and Sam investigates he discovers his father's illustrious past contains some dark and painful secrets ...This Texican murder mystery is one of Sayles' many beautifully constructed and densely populated character dramas (see also City Of Hope and Sunshine State) where, as with so much of his work, every single person is interesting, thoughtful and fully-rounded. This film is also a beautiful example of how to elegantly switch a narrative back and forward through two different eras, both visually through lovely little panning shots which dip in and out of time, and plot-wise as gradually the gauze covering the complex relationships is slowly lifted to reveal what has made the characters who they are. This is immensely satisfying as the pieces fit together, delicately played by a sensational ensemble cast who understand exactly what the story is trying to achieve. Cooper and Peña are both superb as the middle-aged leads, both working county jobs, both struggling to find any meaning to their lives, both unable to move on from a fateful past together. The older actors steal the show with irascible wit, and pragmatism and regret written in equal measure on their faces - Canada in particular is outstanding - and Morton is terrific as ever in one of many parts for Sayles as the no-nonsense army man forced to embrace the tenderness he has long considered a weakness. Perhaps the casting masterstroke though is country legend Kristofferson as the thoroughly evil ghost from the past, whose violent brand of personal justice is horrifyingly plausible. Full of poignant moments, clever misdirection, evocative locations, heartfelt performances and funny lines (when Sam is headed to Mexico and tells a colleague he's going to "the other side", the response is "Republicans ?"), with a fine story and a great ending, this is high quality drama all the way. Shot in the beautiful south-western Texas border cities of Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Laredo.