Tex

Dillon brings authenticity to an earthy but weakly acted film

The people from Disney have ventured way past the borders of fantasyland to make TEX, a realistic, contemporary salute to wholesomeness. Pollyanna it is not, but optimistic and decent, in a gritty sort of way, it certainly is. Unfortunately the movie is only up to Disney’s usual non-cartoon production standards.

Tex is based on S.E. Hinton’s book of the same name, one of her four novels empathizing with Oklahoma teenagers (her first, “The Outsiders,” was recently rendered on film by Francia Coppolla and is due for release). Like the other Hinton books, “Tex” is an unsanitized story about “bad” kids grappling for a niche in the world. In the course of the struggle the characters illustrate, even if they don’t learn, various lessons in character and common sense. Hinton’s work is raw, but not rotten.

Disney has been true to the author both in realism and in restrained moralizing. The adolescents in this movie drink, cuss, peddle drugs and flout rules—and the one adult who tells them outright not to is the bad guy of the show. It’s a welcome try at authenticity and a cleverly subtle sermon.

[ Image: Pasted Graphic.tiff ]

After that there’s only a couple of good things to say about the movie. One is that it’s unpolishedness is occasionally quite pleasing—gives it a candid, “really there” quality—and the other is Matt Dillon.

Although he is relatively new to movies, Dillon plays the title character with a comfortableness and thrift of effort that is more characteristic of veteran actors. Tex McCormick is a not-too-bright fifteen-year-old cowboy punk. With a fractured home life behind him and the possibility of none at all soon, Tex must mature fast. All at once he has to understand poverty, sex, responsibility, goals—a whole passel of problems. Except for momentary lapses Dillon is acutely in character: not too intelligent but not too cocky, either; cocky and genuinely tough in the right proportion; absolutely unpompous. Tex is for the most part an unexceptional figure—his wittiest line is something about nose-picking—and Dillon is content to play him without radiance. The result is magnetism, an attractive rendition of a plain character.

The rest of the cast gives a flat, unanimated script recital, which is ironically typical of Disney productions using three-dimensional actors. The players and the photography both have an embarrassed, amateurish manner that suggests a documentary reenactment using available citizens for actors. As mentioned, this artlessness has the effect of enhancing the realism, the exception is welcome, but far too scarce.

Hinton’s compassionate, earthy story and Dillon’s charismatic performance make the movie. Disney gets credit for bringing the two together or for trying something new, but that’s about all. 

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1. Published in the “Washington Missourian” October 20, 1982