USA,
1996, 135 min
Directed by:
John SaylesScreenplay:
John SaylesCinematography:
Stuart DryburghComposer:
Mason DaringCast:
Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Oni Faida Lampley, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Morton, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Ron Canada, Tony Plana (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
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. (Criterion)
(more)Awards
- Winner
- Nominations
Academy Awards
- 1997 - John Sayles (Best Original Screenplay)
Independent Spirit Awards
- 1997 - Elizabeth Peña (Best Supporting Female)
- 1997 - Maggie Renzi, R. Paul Miller (Best Feature)
- 1997 - Chris Cooper (Best Male Lead)
- 1997 - John Sayles (Best Screenplay)
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)
- 1997 - John Sayles (Best Original Screenplay)
Golden Globes
- 1997 - John Sayles (Best Screenplay)