Accidental Texan

A phone left on during a shootout scene ends Erwin Vandeveer's film career before it's started. That's the opening of 'Accidental Texan', an old-fashioned feel-good dramedy adapted from Cole Thompson's 1999 novel 'Chocolate Lizards', the title it carried on the festival circuit. Mark Bristol directs, after years as an in-demand storyboard artist for filmmakers such as Terrence Malick and Christopher McQuarrie.

Erwin (Rudy Pankow, from 'Outer Banks') left Harvard to act, and the ringtone sets off the squibs on a New Orleans set. Fired on the spot, he heads back to Los Angeles until his car dies in Buffalo Gap, a speck of a town in Texas. With no money for repairs, he's stuck relying on strangers: Faye (Carrie-Anne Moss) at the local diner, and Merle Luskey (Thomas Haden Church), a veteran oilman on the edge of bankruptcy.

Merle has been drilling in all the wrong places and the bank wants his rigs. His plan is for Erwin to use his acting chops to pass himself off as a seasoned landman, buying time with the creditors and with a crooked oil company. Along the way they'll need to win over Scheermeyer (Bruce Dern), a crusty rancher who's sick of people asking to drill on his land.

Shot in Austin and Bartlett, it won the Houston Film Critics Society's Texas Independent Film Award, and Roadside Attractions opened it in the US on 8 March 2024, taking $137,699 from 134 cinemas that weekend. Critics were split. Some enjoyed its throwback warmth and Church's performance, while others found it predictable and full of clichés. In the UK it's available on Prime Video.

• Comedy
• Drama