SOURCE: Alleva, Richard. “Who Killed the Sheriff?: John Sayles's Lone Star.” Commonweal 123, no. 14 (16 August 1996): 19-21.

In the following review, Alleva faults Lone Star for a complicated plot and slow pace, but praises the film overall.

Lone Star is John Sayles's latest exploration of The Way We Live Now. One of the very few filmmakers to have won significant literary recognition (he's received the National Book Award and a MacArthur “genius” grant), Sayles brings a novelist's appetite for texture and characterization to his movie work. In his films, voices aren't drowned by gunfire. His storytelling is patient, thorough, sometimes even tentative. And, like the best novelists, he aspires to extend the reach of his understanding by trying to get under the skin of those different from himself: Latinos, blacks, homosexuals, the very young, the very old, the poor, the rich, all kinds of women. With Sayles, this is never...