Texas Movies? We Got ‘em (Part 3) (September 12, 2025)

by Scott Sosebee

This will conclude the series on the Ten Best Texas Movies

This week we have reached the point in which all lists come to a conclusion, the two best movies ever made either about Texas or with a Texas theme. My two top movies share similarities: both have a small-town Texas sheriff as its main characters, both take place outside major Texas cities, and both have a bit of a mystery story embedded within them. I suspect that most people reading this have seen my pick as the best movie about Texas, but that is likely less so with my second choice. Both, also, were directed by award-winning filmmakers, and both starred fairly well-known actors. Also, native Texans filled roles in both films. Thus, I think we can all stipulate that the “Texas connection” in both films is quite strong. Without further adieu, let’s get to my top two Texas movies. As has been the custom, they will be in reverse order.

Number Two: “Lone Star” (1996): This pick may surprise some because it was just a modest box office success, if even that. The movie’s themes—especially the plot twist at the end that I will not spoil—can be controversial, and some have claimed that they found the plot line to be slow in nature and that it included too many peripheral characters, which clouded some viewer’s overall comprehension of the film. I will not deny that the movie—particularly that ending—is somewhat controversial. That aside, “Lone Star,” directed by John Sayles, who has also directed such film gems as “Eight Men Out,” “Passion Fish,” and “Men With Guns,” is a great movie precisely because it confronts some of our modern issues head-on.

The movie opens with the discovery of a long-dead skeleton on the Army weapons firing range adjacent to the fictional town of Frontera on the Texas-Mexican border (astute viewers will likely pinpoint that Frontera is most likely the stand-in for the real city of Del Rio). Rio County Sheriff Sam Deeds (played by Chris Cooper) is called to the scene, primarily because with the discovered remains is a 1950s era “Sheriff of Rio County” badge. That finding is complicated by the fact that during the 1950s, Sam’s late father, Buddy Deeds (played by Matthew McConaughey during “flash-back” scenes) was the beloved Sheriff of the county. Sam immediately suspects that the body he has found is former Sheriff Charlie Wade (portrayed by Kris Kristofferson, again in flashbacks), who Buddy Deeds took over for when Wade mysteriously disappeared in the late 1950s. He also speculates that his father was the one who killed Wade. The mystery of the body and who is responsible for the murder becomes intertwined with multiple other stories in the film. There is a brewing controversy in the city’s schools over the teaching of Texas history and whether or not the school should include in its lessons the “Mexican side” of the Texas Revolution, as well as the cross-currents of racism found in the past within Texas society. Frontera’s commercial elite—led by the late Buddy Deeds’ chief deputy years ago Hollis Pogue (played by veteran character actor Clifton James)—wants a new jail built, an issue that is being pushed by the business community even though Sam Deeds doesn’t think one is needed. Sam also reacquaints with his high school sweetheart Pìlar Cruz. We discover that Sam’s father and Pìlar’s mother had conspired to keep the two apart, ostensibly because of the ethnic differences. Two peripheral stories are the new African American commanding officer at the Army fort, whose estranged father once ran a bar in Frontera, as well as the unsolved murder of Pìlar’s father. In the end, through a number of twists and turns, all the mysteries are solved, and the solutions affect all involved.

The late Dr. Don Graham, an English professor at the University of Texas-Austin who wrote extensively about Texas movies, once told me that “professors love ‘Lone Star’ because you can talk about it in class,” and I won’t deny that that is some of the appeal for me. The movie gives its viewers an intersection of many modern Texas issues, such as race, border division, class, and how the emerging modernity threatens to subsume the “Texas Myth” that has been created out of the past. Charlie Wade, the murdered former sheriff, is a strutting, talking, racist, bully personification of the old White power structure in Frontera—and thus Texas—and no one in the audience or, really, the town would mourn his loss. It is John Sayles’ best work—he also wrote the screenplay—and one that every Texan should see.

Number One: “No Country for Old Men” (2007): My choice for the best Texas movie of all-time might or might not surprise anyone. Many film critics place this movie not only as the best about Texas, but it makes many people’s best of all-time lists. Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name, the movie was directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, who also wrote the adapted screenplay, and also takes place in the stark and rough Texas borderlands, which is the perfect setting for such a film. The Coen brothers faithfully follow McCarthy’s story of violence, revenge, and a land and people so harsh that it is—like the poem from which the title gets its name—“no country for old men.” The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2008, and Bardem also took the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

The story takes place along the Texas/Mexico border in 1980. Llewelyn Moss, a local laborer played by Josh Brolin, is hunting and comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad in the desert outside town. Everyone on the scene is dead after what was a suicidal firefight between rival drug gangs, except for one severely wounded man, who begs Moss for water. Moss finds a case with over $2 million in cash, so he leaves the man to die and goes home. The man who financed the deal—which we find out is a wealthy Houston oilman—hires hitman Anton Chigurh (portrayed by Javier Bardem), a soulless sociopath who leaves death and destruction in his wake like a character in an apocalyptic tragedy, to retrieve the money and kill whoever stole it. Local Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is baffled by the scene and he also sets out to find Moss. The ensuing chase mirrors the harsh Texas landscape on which it takes place (although most of the movie was filmed in southern New Mexico). It’s violent and lacks moral clarity. Is the audience supposed to see Moss as a “good guy?” Sheriff Bell is conflicted about whether or not he is supposed to actually solve murders that involve gangs that are turning his once fairly peaceful home—although I would question if the Texas borderlands have ever been “peaceful”—into a war zone. The Coen’s direction is almost flawless; it is by far their best work of a masterful oeuvre, and all the acting is equally superb. I can’t believe that Jones was not even nominated for his role as Bell because I think he deserved to win an award. His performance is perfect. He encapsulates the confusion and desultory attitude of a man trying to stem a tide of violence with little more than a band-aid. Yes, in my mind “No Country for Old Men” is not only the best Texas movie, but it may be the best depiction of the churning viciousness of a Texas society that in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries we seem to be experiencing.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.