In the rough days of teen life trying to find where one belongs in relationship to one's self, family and friends and the need for change and breaking away.This movie portrays all of that with great care and fantastic acting by the entire cast.I highly recommend it. What a great film this was- there was good acting, a good script, unexpected moments of hilarity- and best of all this film stayed close to the book. Many of the characters' lines in the movie are directly from the book. If you are a fan of S.E. Hinton and her writings, you won't be disappointed by it. In my mind, "Tex" was even better than "The Outsiders," at least in terms of the movies. Matt Dillon is superb as Texas McCormick, a quiet, somewhat immature teenager living in Oklahoma, the usual setting for Hinton's books. There are few moments in the film (don't worry, I won't give them away) that were extremely funny. However, not only is the humor entertaining in the movie, but the drama is well done too. Tex faces changes at home, with his friends Johnny and Jamie, and at school, and the result makes for a captivating story line. The selection for the supporting cast is right on in almost every case- Jim Metzler plays Tex's brother Mason, who has to tend for his younger brother while also looking ahead to college and his own future. Emilio Estevez is Tex's spunky friend Johnny and Meg Tilly is Johnny's independent-minded sister Jamie, the object of Tex's affections. Even the filming and quality of the movie is not bad, considering that it was made two decades ago. The music is usually fitting in each scene, and the script came off sounding realistic and genuine. All in all, this is a movie well worth checking out. I think the only thing wrong with this movie is the rating it received; there's probably enough swearing in this movie to have earned it a PG-13 rating. Highly recommended.