Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 11, 1995 TAG: 9511140007
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's meant to be the final chapter in author Larry McMurtry's saga that began with his Pulitzer Prize novel ``Lonesome Dove'' and the enormously successful 1989 CBS miniseries made from it. It's surely that, although it isn't McMurtry's final word on the subject. His 1995 ``Dead Man's Walk,'' a ``prequel'' to ``Lonesome Dove'' about the early adventures of Capt. Call and his old partner, Gus McCrae, is in bookstores now and ABC will turn it into yet another miniseries later this TV season. McMurtry even promises a second ``prequel'' soon.
But the road for Capt. Call definitely seems to end - at least chronologically - with ``Streets of Laredo,'' a grim and powerful adventure that finally lets this hardhearted, trail-weary old warrior find peace in his belated discovery of the capacity to love, buried so deep within him.
Aesthetically, McMurtry's TV version of his best-selling novel - he co-wrote and co-produced it for CBS - is the perfect coda for his saga. It is an artfully crafted, movingly acted and stylishly photographed masterpiece brought to vivid life by veteran director Joseph Sargent.
Now old, grizzled and badly used by time, Woodrow Call (James Garner) walks with the stiffness of age, struggles to get on his horse and squints to clear his cloudy vision whenever he aims his rifle. But he still has a lawman's greatest assets: the savvy of a long life on the trail and an absolute absence of fear.
He'll need those qualities in spades on this adventure because he's going after a pair of vicious killers: The boyish, blond Mexican Joey Garza (Alexis Cruz), a train robber who has killed 16 already and is now armed with a high-powered, scope-sighted rifle that can kill from a mile away; and the sadistic Mox Mox (Kevin Conway), the one-eyed ``man burner'' who once rode with the notorious Blue Duck, now back roaming the Brazos territory, burning men, women and children alive.
McMurtry moves all his characters toward their ultimate destinies as the journey finally ends in a squalid Mexican village just across the Texas border, followed by an epilogue that seemingly leaves little doubt where the saga of ``Lonesome Dove'' finally ends.
Along the way, the landscape of ``Streets of Laredo'' is dusty and windblown, sweltering by day, freezing by night. It's part Texas, part Mexico and all fable. Some of McMurtry's characters are standard western myths - Judge Roy Bean (Ned Beatty) and John Wesley Hardin (Randy Quaid) - while others are his own legends in the making: the uncanny tracker Famous Shoes (Wes Studi), schoolmarm Lorena (Sissy Spacek), the quietly courageous ex-Ranger Pea Eye Parker (Sam Shepard), the fiercely defiant Maria Garza (Sonia Braga), the brave, kindhearted drunk Billy Williams (George Carlin), the tragedy-dogged deputy Plunkert (Tristan Tait) and, of course, Capt. Call himself.
In a way, Call is McMurtry's Don Quixote, riding with his own Sancho Panza in the person of Brookshire (Charles Martin Smith), a runty, derby-wearing New Yorker sent along to keep the accounts straight on Capt. Call's hunt on behalf of their employers, the Texas railroad.
``I imagine you were expecting someone younger,'' Call says to Brookshire when the surprised Easterner first looks him over.
Brookshire had indeed, later confessing he didn't think Call was the man for the job because ``He seemed old and kind of stiff.''
They make an odd pair: The tired old ex-Ranger, so fearless that, in one of the film's best sequences, he attacks Mox Mox and his band single-handedly - and the Eastern dude, who's afraid he'll be blown away by the Texas wind, like a tumbleweed. But their time together seasons them both, leaving Call a more caring and sensitive man and Brookshire with the guts to look fearlessly down Joey Garza's gun barrel to say, ``Well, at least I got to look you in the face.''
Capt. Call is ideal for the 67-year-old Garner. He virtually becomes the phlegmatic Call in speech and body language, dispensing with even the slightest trace of his familiar ``Maverick'' eye twinkle. He was born to play this man in the twilight of his career, a fading hero well aware of ``the effect of reputation.''
Garner was, in fact, the first choice to play Call in ``Lonesome Dove,'' but an injury denied him the part that Tommy Lee Jones eventually played so well. It's fortuitous that Garner finally caught up with the role because this is film acting at its very best.
Equally memorable are Braga, who hasn't had a really demanding screen role since ``Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,'' but burns up the screen this time; and Smith, who does his keenest, most moving work since ``Never Cry Wolf.'' Also surprisingly effective is comedian Carlin, whose skill as a dramatic actor is often forgotten.
Like the original ``Lonesome Dove,'' its sequel is much more than a western.
``Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo,'' a two-part miniseries, airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7.
by CNB