Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511100056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Lonesome Dove'' first aired in 1989 and has achieved the status of a modern classic. Then CBS did a foolish thing and cobbled together a sequel not based on a McMurtry book, ``Return to Lonesome Dove,'' in 1993. It was contrived and belabored. ``Streets of Laredo'' is the true sequel - true to the spirit and sensibility of the original.
The five-hour film airs on CBS (WDBJ, Channel 7) in two parts, with the first three hours Sunday nightat 8 and the conclusion Tuesday at 9.
James Garner becomes the third actor to play Capt. Woodrow Call, ``the most famous Texas Ranger that's ever been,'' as one admirer describes him. Tommy Lee Jones created the part. Jon Voight, looking like a scared owl, took a stab at it in ``Return.'' Garner gives a strong, stoical performance, playing it close to the vest, for better or worse, and not Garnerizing the role.
This will disappoint Garner fans who love him for the way he delivers sly sarcasm and wry rejoinders. Woodrow Call isn't a witty rascal; he's basically no-nonsense. He gets the job done, and so does Garner, who looks great in a beard and in a Western hat. Garner does ride fat in the saddle, but at this point in his life, it seems, so would Capt. Call.
Simply to list the violent acts that occur will frighten some viewers off. Within the first 10 minutes, several men are shot full of holes in a train robbery. In Presidio, Texas, a man gets a large part of his ear shot off, then carries the severed part around in his pocket. An evil lawman rapes a pregnant woman. In a flashback, a one-eyed pyromaniac burns a young boy alive. Men are shot, horses are shot, a crazed pig is shot, and the blood flows like, well, blood.
Call, who is normally violent only in the line of duty, administers a severe beating to a petty small-town sheriff, who refuses to release two of Call's men. ``I won't tolerate rude behavior,'' Call explains.
The important thing about the violence is that it's made horrific and not cute by veteran director Joseph Sargent. It's not like the violence in modern movies about tough guys who shoot first and make smart-alecky remarks later. McMurtry, who cowrote the screenplay himself (with Diana Ossana) is painting a purposefully bleak picture of life in the Old West. And bleak it is.
This was a place where treacheries lay just around the bend, where a person could be killed meaninglessly at any moment, and where the concept of justice was virtually moot. You know - sort of like Los Angeles today.
Call and a few compadres are on the trail of a particularly vicious train robber and killer named Joey Garza, played charismatically by young star-to-be Alexis Cruz. Somewhere along the line, it's said of him, Joey ``turned bad,'' so bad that he tries to drown his own siblings, attacks his own mother, and threatens to feed his sister to a bear.
Riding with Call are Charles Martin Smith as a whining railroad accountant from Brooklyn who says, on a cold night late in the film, ``I'd rather be shot than shiver. I am tired of shivering.'' They're joined by Tristan Trait as an inexperienced deputy, Wes Studi as Famous Shoes, an Indian known for his abilities as a tracker, and Sam Shepard, extremely moving as Pea Eye Parker, Call's old friend.
Sissy Spacek plays Parker's wife Lorena who, tired of waiting for him to return, sets off on her own horse to find him. Sonia Braga, the famous Brazilian actress, gives a towering performance as Joey Garza's mother, torn between maternal devotion and her revulsion at her son's utterly dastardly deeds. Ned Beatty, in a scraggly gray beard, has a hearty time as Judge Roy Bean, and Randy Quaid is nasty and menacing as John Wesley Hardin.
It starts off all nice and peaceable-like, with a brilliant orange and purple sunrise, but all hell will break loose just over the horizon. The writers do some unwise things to their hero, Call, in the last two hours, but despite the drawbacks, ``Streets of Laredo'' makes for lusty and powerful television.
by CNB