TEXAS RANGERS, BURIED RIFLES AND CONSPIRACIES AT THE MOVIES

Well my first week of shore leave is over and I've not done a great deal nursing a stubborn and pesky summer cold. I'm now left with internal plumbing full of unwanted snot. Any more and I'll be leaving a trail!

Me and the Missus did go to the great Steel City of Sheffield on the train this week, which with its huge aluminium water wall near the station, looked gleaming and bright in the sunshine, a hint of what a chromium future might be like. Our business concluded, a South Korean noodle dish was the perfect city lunch. I think I'd like South Korea. Has anyone been?

I have watched some movies too, using up the final days of our Amazon Prime. They're not great on new films but I found enough flicks to keep me entertained. For some reason I had an appetite for Texas Rangers/ JFK/ conspiracies and courtroom dramas and combinations of all four.

There is something appealing about the harsh desert lands and mesas of Texas. Equally intriguing are the cowboy-like Rangers and the mythos that surrounds them. How they fit into the State's law enforcement hierarchy as compared say to a sheriff I don't know but what the hell. 

I kicked off appropriately with Hell or High Water, a recent film about two Texan bank robbers and their persistent adversary, a wily old Ranger played brilliantly by Jeff Bridges. Jeff's voice seems to have got grittier with age and now sounds like he's chewing a cactus. Its terrific and I enjoyed Hell or High Water immensely. Its like a No Country For Old Men without the psycho gas man.

This took me to JFK, the conspiracy marathon by Oliver Stone. I like Kevin Costner and enjoyed his role in that other Kennedy portrait, 100 Days. JFK deals with 'that' day in Dallas and a supposed New Orleans connection. The slow paced revelations and frequent backwaters make for a great legal tale.

The Pelican Brief was another conspiracy I enjoyed, this time starring Julia Roberts as the fugitive law student Darcy Shaw who stumbles across avian skullduggery with the guano leading straight to the White House. A young Denzel Washington is the tireless reporter who helps Darcy out of the swamp.

Further courtroom battles were had in the Southern US drama A Time to Kill starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey, an actor I always get mixed up with Woody Harrelson. A Time to Kill is a difficult film about racial prejudice and the Ku Klux Klan and also stars erstwhile thriller queen Ashley Judd [what happened to Ashley?]

The final film I watched in this Southern States bonanza was an old favourite of mine, a perfect coming together of old style Texas Border Patrol, JFK conspiracies, CIA, FBI, goodies and baddies: namely, Flashpoint, released in 1984.

I managed to see it this time round free of charge on Daily Motion or Vimeo. Starring the impossibly long-legged Kris Kristofferson and Treat Williams, it describes the misfortunes that befall two Texan border guards who run across a stash of old cash in the mesas and dream of the big time.

Similar to the stunning No Country For Old Men, with its central message that there's no such thing as a free desert lunch, Flashpoint is a sobering tale of why you should leave bags of buried loot and rifles clutched by skeletons in the sand well alone.

There are lots more films of similar grit but they may require payment if I wish to see them again online: A Simple Plan, the brilliant Blood Simple, The Net and Parkland to name a few.

Then there are some flicks I've never see, which is always a gamble: The Onion Field with John Savage, Badlands with Martin Sheen [set in Montana] and Extreme Prejudice with Nick Nolte.

Which Texan and/or Conspiracy films do you like readers?