Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Death In Texas’ on Hulu, A Tale Of Trouble And Moral Redemption In El Paso

Bits of the Western ethos, bloodsoaked dark comedy, and weepy, sometimes whiskey-soaked melodrama drift on the thin, hot desert air in Death in Texas (Hulu), a 2020 indie from writer-director Scott Windhauser that’s found its way to Hulu after a run on Amazon Prime. (Windhauser co-penned 2018’s broad disaster thievery mashup Hurricane Heist, if that’s something you’re interested in.) When an ex-con lays it all on the line to save his dying mother, he might just have to drive his own severed thumb into Bruce Dern’s eye socket to do it.

DEATH IN TEXAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When Billy Walker (Ronnie Gene Blevins) is paroled after seven years in prison, he really can’t believe it, since the good side of the world isn’t anything he’s ever seen. A voiceover reveals a little about Billy’s worldview; it’s a place of black and white and good and evil, but no recognition of the grey areas where life is usually spent. But Billy returns to El Paso and his Mom (Lara Flynn Boyle) determined to hit restart, even if he has less faith in that than Grace does. It was Grace, after all, who got his sentence shortened, using her diagnosis of terminal liver disease as a means of greasing the wheels of mercy for her wayward but loving son. But Grace’s grim prognosis is news to Billy. And there’s no way she’ll get to the top of the organ donor list, either. Well, there is one way. But it demands Billy draw on his pent-up rage and thirst for drink. Before long, a few drug dealers are dead, their cash is gone, and salty El Paso crime boss Reynolds (a terrific Bruce Dern) is asking dirty cop Asher (John Ashton, cantankerous and dispeptic) to bring him Billy’s head on a platter. Instead, Billy comes for Reynolds on his own, bodily harm be damned.

While Billy’s racking up the body count, Grace is having a meet-cute in her hospital room with caregiver John (Stephen Lang), and the two bare their souls as fellow travelers on the uneven, dead-end cul de sacs of life. John is also recovering from a personal tragedy, one that somewhat impossibly connects straight back to Billy. And with Grace’s life (and love life) at stake, her son grows more and more determined to spend his last chance in this world of hurt on her ultimate well-being.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? There’s a kinetic component to Dern’s performance as Reynolds as he becomes increasingly frazzled and a little absurd. The local crime kingpin can’t believe it’s a small fry like Billy who’s so thoroughly mucked up his operation. And in that absurdity, as well as the violence Billy causes, there are echoes of In Order of Disappearance (2014) and Stellan Skarsgard’s morose snowplow driver who complicates things for two Norwegian crime gangs. It’s also worth revisiting El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019), which shares with Death in Texas its washes of neo-Western vibing and a lonesome protagonist with little care for his own safety.

Performance Worth Watching: Ronnie Gene Blevins has worked steadily in film and television as a character actor going back 20 years, and he carries both Billy’s solitude and his penchant for violence well. Billy is a man, an ex-con, caught between worlds with his frayed nerves set on a low boil, and Blevins brings this out with carefully chosen words and his shoulders haunched inside a cowboy’s denim jacket.

Memorable Dialogue: “I know a doctor over in Juarez who can get you a healthy liver. It’s not cheap. It’s far from ethical, or legal. But money talks a little louder across the wall.” El Paso’s codependency with its neighbor to the South is a constant presence in the margins of Death in Texas. The cartels control everything in the region — even the narrative of this film.

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: Death in Texas writer/director Scott Windhauser chapterizes his film with headings corresponding to the events of Billy Walker’s eventful few days of post-jailbird freedom. Evil, Free, Choices, Sorrow, Power, Sacrifice, Reckoning, Redemption — it’s definitely a journey for our boy as the trouble that’s always tended to find him does so once, twice, and three times again. When it happens the first time, an acute, Tarantino-like spurt of bloodshed stemming from an increasingly sticky situation, it’s jarring. By the time Billy’s trussed up in crusty crime lord Bruce Dern’s slaughterhouse, and cartel soldiers are shooting and slicing him up, it feels like just another day of the week in this guy’s life. The film’s title could be amended to read “Death Wish in Texas.”

But really, his blood is all Billy has. He knows he’s used up all of his chances, and it’s that resignation that informs the final decision Death in Texas drives toward. Blevins brings this entire mortal crucible to bear, as Billy feels his hours to live burning off even as he tries to survive long enough to save Grace. And Lang matches him as John, the wounded man willing to live out the string of existence at the mercy of his mistakes. (Lang has lately been killing it in character roles such as this; see his fine work in the rowdy 2019 blood-and-guts indie VFW, or 2018’s Braven, where he appears alongside Jason Momoa.) We’ll allow Death in Texas its clunkier elements of plotting, because it’s so downright tender in its numerous sequences of character-driven pathos.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Fueled by the strength of its character performances, Death in Texas bleeds sensitivity when it isn’t straight up bleeding from gunshot wounds or eye gouges.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch Death In Texas on Hulu