A kind of CHINATOWN on sleeping pills, and taking place in the Lone Star State, TEXAS COTTON is actually a pop culture party trick of a Modern-Western Thriller, being it stars the star of what's considered the best-worst movie ever made: That being George Hardy of infamous TROLL 2 niche fame, who in real life is a smiling, upbeat, jovial personality... and a dentist at that...
So for the ultra-serious role of a veteran cop seeking clues in a small town in which he's a dedicated and stubbornly honest sheriff, Hardy is played safe, for the most part, with a one-note, dissatisfied expression of someone who not only tasted someone else's bitter coffee, but has grown contemptuously accustomed to it...
With a tattered cowboy's weary bow legs harboring a squat build; a lantern jaw and a shocked-white, wavy head of hair, he looks pretty good, but doesn't move around all that naturally on screen... His lack of acting skills really shows not while speaking but listening to others, as if waiting for his turn...
Then again, when he does talk it's just-true-enough to make his character seem genuinely concerned within the usual Neo Noir template of going from location to location: to unearth hidden truths that are mostly covered in nefarious, sometimes dangerous lies. The latter providing the film's biggest problem...
The flamboyant, horribly overboard villain leaves little to the imagination: a mayor so crooked he can hardly stand upright. And despite the feeling the director's in the process of learning how, there's a cerebral flow that works: A kind of mellow, page-turning cadence...
And the very last shot, which intentionally bookends the melancholy cold open, is beautiful and effective, and almost makes one wish that the middle-ground had more of a point than a process.
