There’s nothing deceiving about the marketing for Lone Star Deception; it’s as bad as it looks. As more and more studios suspend their major theatrical releases in the coming months, due to the coronavirus, people are staying at home to turning to streaming services for new and original content. Lone Star Deception will debut on a multitude of platforms starting March 24th, 2020. After taking some time to reflect on this film, I would say that, of all the hundreds of movies and series across Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Apple, this film should definitely be placed at the bottom of your list.
The film begins as Eric Roberts’ character Bill Sagle, a rich man in the oil and gas business, finds out that his nephew is being blackmailed. The nephew, a republican candidate for the next Governor of Texas, spent $100 on a hooker, and now she has video footage that she plans to leak if he doesn’t pull out of the race. Bill Sagle and his posse of rich white guys convince the nephew to stand down. This decision seems the one and only smart choice the characters in this movie make. When the band of merry rich white dudes ask Bill who they should now back for the Governor’s race, Bill presents them with Tim Bayh.
Tim Bayh, played by Anthony Ray Parker (most notably known as Dozer from The Matrix), works at Bill’s firm and has absolutely zero political background. Throughout the film, Tim’s run for Governor is compared to Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential run. Perhaps the screenwriter couldn’t think of another black politician, or maybe he forgot about Obama’s service as State Senator and U.S. Senator for Illinois in the 11 years before running for President. Somehow this is still a valid argument to convince a room full of billionaires to invest in Tim’s campaign. On top of that, Tim has been a registered Democrat all of his life, but he agrees to run as a republican so long as it doesn’t conflict with his values. This elaborate and unlikely plan seems to work as the film is quick to say that Tim is viewed as the frontrunner for the race.
The plot, or lack thereof, thickens after Bill’s nephew commits suicide. The hooker and her pimp still want to blackmail someone, so they choose uncle Bill as their next target. Threatening to release the footage of his nephew, they demand more money. Bill, who’s clearly made of money and has tons of people in the shadows that could do his dirty work, tasks Texas Governor Candidate Tim Bayh to handle the mess. Why would Bill ask his new political candidate to do this? I don’t know, but that’s what happens.
The next series of events happen so fast that I couldn’t believe my eyes. First, Tim breaks into the pimp’s house, drinks some liquor, and then shoots the pimp in the arm. Tim then leaves the glass and his fingerprints all over the scene, but for some reason takes a towel to wipe off his own gun before throwing the towel at the pimp. In the very next scene, the pimp kidnaps Tim’s daughter and hides her in the basement of a restaurant. In the scene after that, Tim immediately goes straight to the restaurant and rescues his daughter. Two scenes later, the pimp sends a couple of gunmen to Tim’s house, who Tim instantly kills. All of this, and more, happens within the first half of the film. The second half is full of just as many action scenes and plot holes, all delivered with the lackluster quality of copy machine tutorial video on Youtube.
Written by Ed DeZecallos, a 76-year-old real estate developer, this film is chock-full of lazy storytelling, cheesy one-liners, horrible technical work, and soft-core racism. While I was thankful that the racist bad guys never went on an N-word rant, the film sprinkles in plenty of other tired racist language. The casting is horrendous, with the bulk of the money clearly going to Eric Roberts. Anthony Ray Parker stumbles over his own lines time and time again in the film, which made me to wonder several times if there was a “no second take” policy on set. The audio is very unbalanced, and the majority of the shots either linger for too long or are poorly framed. The 103-minute runtime felt like it was 90 minutes too long, as the pacing of the film doesn’t help its boring storyline. I’ve seen a lot of B movies that were made on a tight budget but had a lot of heart and talent behind it. This film felt like someone was bored and had some spare funds to make a movie for the hell of it. As I said before, I wouldn’t recommend this film unless you’ve watched every single other title currently available.
RORSCHACH RATING:
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