King of Texas

"King of Texas" is a knock-off of Shakespeare's "King Lear" which sports an excellent cast, a sterling performance by Stewart, and solid art and technicals all on location in Mexico. Unfortunately the film was a bad idea as Shakespeare and Texas have just about nothing in common and the breeding of those incongruous elements results in an unwieldy and unattractive progeny. Most would agree that much of the beauty of the Bard's work is in the prose and "King of Texas" makes that point clear as it fails to achieve more than a modicum of entertainment while looking silly against its Mexican backdrop with obvious histrionics, gushing theatrics, and staginess ad nauseam. A novelty watch for the curious at best. (B-)

Excellent performance by all actors, most especially Patrick Stewart. The emotional range is wide. Very moving film indeed. A film worth watching.

I watched this movie on TV last night, I went in blind, all I knew was it was a re-imagining of Shakespeare's King Lear and it starred Patrick Stewart and Roy Scheider. That was enough for me, so I gave it a chance and was pleased I did.

Roy Scheider is simply wonderful here, stealing the movie right from under the nose of Patrick Stewart, which is no easy feat (even with his dodgy accent) because Stewart is on top form here too.

Your heart just goes out to him. You just want to help him. One complaint I did have was, he gets so far gone in such a short amount of time.

A good effort and worth a watch at least once.

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.

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.