King of Texas

'King of Texas' is an enjoyable and attractive Western that details the dissolution of a despotic cattle baron's family with King Lear's Shakespeare touches. Familiar drama with awesome acting , colorful scenarios and rousing score. This is a charming and luxurious remake about a classic play in Western style dealing with John Lear (Patrick Stewart). He is a powerful Texas cattle rancher, who's ostracized by his family when he demands that his three daughters prove their love to him if they want to inherit his kingdom. While two of his daughters, Susannah (Marcia Gay Harden) and Rebecca (Lauren Holly), secure their future with lies, Claudia (Julie Cox), the third, refuses and is disinherited for it. Lear finds that once they have his property, they reject him. Serious conflicts arouse which split the family. When you rule with an iron fist and a heart of steel, you pay with your flesh and blood !. Between land and power lies the frontier of greed... the saga of family... the heart of drama !.

Agreeable TV film contains intense drama , racial slur against Mexican people, familiar confrontation with dramatic taking on among father-daughters and being beautifully realized. Good TV adaptation of the Shakespeare classic set this time in the American West by way of ¨Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985)¨, with Lear as a magnate in the Old West whose decision to divide his empire among his three daughters results in disaster. And romantic interest is supplied by the ever lovely Julie Cox and her love interest Steven Bauer. Main and support are full of known faces providing notables interpretations. Stars Patrick Stewart giving a fine acting as self-made ranch tycoon John Lear who divides his holdings amongst his three daughters. They're adequately played by Marcia Gay Harden as the oldest and meanest, Lauren Holly, and Julie Cox. Adding an excellent plethora of secondary actors with special mention for the deceased Roy Scheider, along with David Alan Grier, Colm Meaney, Patrick Bergin, Matt Letscher, Liam Waite and Steven Bauer as Menchaca.

'King of Texas' with exciting plot from Stephen Harrigan displays elements of Greek tragedy and a touching finale. It results to be a peculiar version about family confrontation inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, theme to be treated in other Hollywood films such as ¨House of strangers¨ (1949) written by Philip Yordan , being directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz with Edward G Robinson, Luther Adler, Richard Conte and ¨Broken Lance¨ (1954) by Edward Dmytryk with Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, Hugh O'Brian, Earl Holliman, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

It displays evocative and colorful cinematography by Paul Elliott and Guillermo Rosas. As well as thrilling musical score by John Altman. The motion picture was well directed by Uli Edel. This German director is a good filmmaker who has worked as cinema as TV and even collaborated with Douglas Sirk in the 1980s. He has a long career with hits and flops , working as in USA as Germany. His film debut was the successful and thorny film: Christiane F (1981) about the world of teenage drug addicts . Following various movies in all kinds of genres , such as : Last exit to Brooklyn, RAF, Nibelungs, Houdini, Palace, Rasputin, The Mists of Avalon, Purgatory, Pay the Ghost , among others. Rating: 6.5/10. The picture will appeal to Western genre fans.

King Leer plays Mr. Dunson (from Red River).

Of course, as an old Patrick Stewart fan, I loved his performance as John Leer. Pretty good accent -- he only slipped once that I caught -- after a series of consistent "hoss", he said "horse." Anyway, the cast was excellent; particular kudos to Roy Scheider.

My major complaint is that it just doesn't feel much like a western. Perhaps a western stage play? Most westerns are action=centered, of course, and don't have nearly as much dialog to get in. So, I missed a lot of the western schtick that John Ford or Andrew MacLaglen might have put in. Nice try.

. . . Better than Mel Gibson doing "Hamlet."

Good performances all around, especially by Stewart. It is unfortunate, however, that nothing could be done about his accent. Stewart has a fine voice. Trouble is he's, well, English. I think they would have been better off leaving things as they were. The Southwestern overlay sometimes distracted from the dialog by generating unintentional humor. If I could buy a Frenchman named "Jean Luc" with an English accent for seven years on TV, I'd probably be willing to accept an English landowner in North America. There were enough of them, after all.

Accents notwithstanding, the film is well worth seeing. The plot line remains intact and the direction is solid. I hope it makes it to DVD.

Stephen Harrigan has produced a script that the Bard himself would have been proud of. Patrick Stewart, in the lead, heads a cast that lived up to the quality screenplay. On the whole, a magnificent film, worthy of a cinema run.

This short treatment does well in general by the story and by the characters. The characters have a certain frontier eloquence and it isn't till John Lear goes mad-- a bit too suddenly-- that you really miss Shakespeare's poetry. The script tries to compensate for the lack of weight in the storm scene by introducing a more pedestrian revelation: Lear comes to understand that peace is better than fighting. Well, duh.

On the positive side, we have sisters who are a little better motivated and less one-dimensionally monstrous than we're accustomed to and we have an interesting back-story (with an echo of the Biblical daughters of Zelophehad) in which Lear had intended his son to be heir but the son died in battle leaving only daughters to inherit.

Somehow we manage to meet a pretty full cast of characters, and they all seem natural occupants of free Texas, where the inhospitable desert separates warring ranches the way Shakespeare's heath separated the little fiefdoms. The story unfolds quite naturally too, with a creditable amount of the original complexity preserved.

The main weakness is the musical score, routine at best where the Texan setting provided the opportunity for something more distinctive and memorable.