Matthew McConaughey’s Best Performance Is Finally Getting The Treatment It Deserves
How many Matthew McConaughey performances have you actually seen? Fans love his freaky intensity in True Detective and his rough charisma in The Wolf of Wall Street, but if these are some of the only roles you’ve seen the talented actor in, we’re here to tell you those are rookie numbers and you need to pump them up.
Here’s where to start: Criterion reports that Lone Star is getting a 4K release, and even after all these years, this 1996 film contains Matthew McConaughey’s career-best performance.
Matthew McConaughey’s Lone Star is getting a 4K release
Lone Star is a modern Western whose plot revolves around a sheriff who investigates how his predecessor was murdered 40 years previously. Even though he is warned not to poke his nose too deeply into the past, the sheriff continues the investigation while rekindling things with his old high school sweetheart, and both of these decisions end up having profound and unexpected consequences for his life.
The Matthew McConaughey movie is filled with great actors, including Chris Cooper as Sheriff Sam Deeds. It also has some great character actors in it, including Ron Canada and Clifton James. However, the best performance in the movie came from a young McConaughey, and we’re particularly excited to see that performance in 4K.
Lone Star is a modern Western whose plot revolves around a sheriff who investigates how his predecessor was murdered 40 years previously.
Via flashbacks, Matthew McConaughey actually plays Chris Cooper’s father in Lone Star. In the modern day, he is remembered by locals as a legendary sheriff (he got the job after the corrupt previous sheriff suddenly disappeared) and a kindhearted man whom the entire town more or less still adores.
Inevitably, his son’s investigation into the death of Kris Kristofferson’s corrupt sheriff Charlie Wade reveals a few skeletons in daddy’s closet, and McConaughey does a pitch-perfect job of bringing this complex performance to life in his relatively short screentime.
It was a performance so good that we might not be overstating it to say that Lone Star helped show the rest of Hollywood that Matthew McConaughey was ready for the big leagues.
Matthew McConaughey plays Chris Cooper’s father in Lone Star
Aside from his iconic performance in the excellent Dazed and Confused, McConaughey before this had mostly been appearing in dreck like Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (sorry, horror lovers, but we said what we said).
Shortly after the 1996 Lone Star, however, the talented actor landed roles in big films from big directors, including Robert Zemeckis’s Contact and Steven Spielberg’s Amistad.
Whether you’d like to see where Matthew McConaughey’s career kicked into high gear or whether you’d just like to check out an awesome neo-Western, this upcoming 4K release of Lone Star provides you the perfect opportunity for serious entertainment.
It’s not coming out until January 16, which means you’ve got plenty of time to place your pre-order for the Criterion discs (hey, if you guys aren’t the ones keeping physical media alive, we don’t know who is!). Considering the ongoing actor’s strike ensures Hollywood will have a colder winter release schedule than usual, January will be the perfect time to check out a film as red-hot as Lone Star.
