Tex (film)

Tex is a 1982 American drama film directed by Tim Hunter (his first film as a director) and written by Charles S. Haas. It is based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Matt Dillon and Jim Metzler play brothers who struggle after their mother dies and their father walks out on them.

Tex is seen as one of the earliest efforts for Disney to put mature content in its movies and received positive reviews for its realism and its content. However, over the decades, it has become of the most difficult Disney movies ever to find.

Premise
A coming-of-age adventure about two brothers, Tex and Mason McCormick struggling to make it on their own when their mother dies and their father leaves them in their Oklahoma home.

Cast

 * Matt Dillon as Tex McCormick
 * Jim Metzler as Mason McCormick
 * Meg Tilly as Jamie Collins
 * Bill McKinney as Pop McCormick
 * Frances Lee McCain as Mrs. Johnson
 * Ben Johnson as Cole Collins
 * Phil Brock as Lem Peters
 * Nell Carter as Mrs. Peters
 * Emilio Estevez as Johnny Collins
 * Tom Virtue as Bob Collins
 * Jack Thibeau as Coach Jackson
 * Željko Ivanek as Hitchhiker
 * Pamela Ludwig as Connie

Production
The film was rated "PG" rather than the "G" then customarily earned by Walt Disney Studios productions, and was noted as an early effort by Disney to incorporate more mature subject matter into its films. Tim Hunter, who had previously co-written the 1979 film Over the Edge with Charles Haas, brought the project to Disney and asked for the opportunity to direct it himself. The film was shot entirely on location in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma and its suburbs, the setting of the S. E. Hinton novel on which it is based.

Reception
Tex received mainly positive reviews from critics, and has an 83% "fresh" rating from the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Janet Maslin of The New York Times lauded the picture as "an utterly disarming, believable portrait of a small-town adolescent" that "captures Miss Hinton's novel perfectly" and that would "make a star out of Matt Dillon" and "forever alter the way moviegoers think about Walt Disney pictures." Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of 4 and noted that Hunter and Haas, as in their previous writing effort, the 1979 film Over the Edge, were "still remembering what it's like to be young, still getting the dialogue and the attitudes, the hang-ups and the dreams, exactly right." David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor called it "probably the best picture turned out by the Disney studio since the heyday of the legendary Walt himself."

On the other hand, Variety wrote that "writers Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter (latter making his directing debut) seem intent on incorporating every conceivable adolescent and adult trauma into their script [from the novel by S.E. Hinton], thus leaving the film with a very overdone, contrived feeling."