ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
SYNOPSIS:
John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) and his best friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas)
leave their Texan ranch and make way towards the Rio Grande. They cross paths
with Jimmy (Lucas Black), a teenage misfit who has a mind of his own - a recipe
for disaster. Cole and Rawlins start working on a ranch for a wealthy Mexican
landowner Rocho (Ruben Blades), and soon Cole falls in love with his beautiful
daughter Alejandra (Penelope Cruz). But in an age when a woman's reputation is
all she has, the love affair is doomed from the beginning.
"The horses are certainly very pretty, and so is the scenery. In fact
the scenery is spectacular. Rugged Texas and New Mexico settings with their
barren landscape, open plains and mountainous terrains exude their own
character. The stark beauty of nature coupled with the spirited wild horses are
perhaps the highlights of Billy Bob Thornton's character driven odyssey.
Although I haven't read the book, I suspect it is far more conducive to
emotional response than its translation on the screen. Cinematic and visually
splendid, Marty Stuart's sweeping soundtrack brings timbre and texture to the
tale, but emotionally I still did not connect. Too much seems to be crammed into
the story, and as a result, the film never flows, but feels fragmented. All the
Pretty Horses is a coming of age story - a story about friendship, love and
loyalty. Matt Damon is solid as the central character John Grady Cole, whose
optimism and sense of adventure take him on a journey of discovery. It's a
subtle role and Damon is the epitome of decency. Henry Thomas (you may remember
him as 10 year old Elliott in Steven Spielberg's ET) and Lucas Black (the young
boy from Sling Blade) are memorable as Cole's buddies, while Penelope Cruz is
elusive as the Mexican rancher's daughter. Unfortunately the love affair between
Cole and Alejandra never heats up: if there is any smouldering passion, it is so
deeply submerged, that it never ignites. The film is a glorious feast for the
eyes, but frankly I would have liked to have seen more of those extraordinary
black, white, chocolate, tan, caramel and grey horses with their dashing manes,
proud stances and soulful eyes. Magnificent, wild horses galloping unbridled
over vast plains into the sunset…. a vision to dream about."
Louise Keller
”Billy Bob Thornton is a highly gifted actor, but so far (in my view) not
much of a director. His first feature, Sling Blade, was one of the most
overrated films of the 90s, labouring through more than two hours of painfully
single-minded build-up to a thuddingly banal shock ending worthy of Stephen
King. All The Pretty Horses has almost the opposite problem: based on a novel by
Cormac McCarthy (which I haven't read) it's romantic in tone but weirdly
scattered, giving only occasional hints of what drew Thornton to the clearly
intractable source material. At the start, with two youthful cowboys riding
across the Texan plains toward the Rio Grande, the imagery automatically
suggests a classic Western, but much of the story refuses to fit this mould.
Instead we get a mix of genres - romance, adventure, coming-of-age film - bound
together by lush shots of landscapes and horses, plus a lot of gnomic
crackerbarrel wisdom (it would be interesting to know how much of the dialogue
in Ted Tally's script comes directly from McCarthy). Reports suggest that
Thornton originally designed the film to run much longer, which presumably
explains the narrative jumps, characters who appear and disappear abruptly, and
rushed voiceover exposition during the opening credits. Matt Damon is also a
problem: he's too old for the part, and for all his coy half-smiles and shy
mumbling he's never persuasive as an archetype of boyish innocence. Still, some
of the syntax of an epic remains in the alternation between vast craggy vistas
and close-up faces that fill the screen, and the prevailing incoherence creates
a dreamlike quality that's not all bad. Certain scenes will hang in my memory -
John's taming of the wild mustangs, the glimpses of Alejandra from a distance on
horseback, the death of the teenage outlaw Blevins - even if I'm not certain how
they fit into a larger design. For that, I suppose I'll have to read the book.”
Jake Wilson
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CRITICAL COUNT
Favourable: 0
Unfavourable: 0
Mixed: 2
SOUNDTRACK REVIEW
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (M)
(US)
CAST: Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, Lucas Black, Penelope Cruz, Ruben Blades
DIRECTOR: Billy Bob Thornton
PRODUCER: Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Salerno
SCRIPT: Ted Tally
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Barry Markowitz
EDITOR: Sally Menke
MUSIC: Marty Stuart
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Clark Hunter
RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes
AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR: Columbia TriStar
AUSTRALIAN RELEASE: May 10, 2001
VIDEO RELEASE: November 7, 2001
VIDEO DISTRIBUTOR: Col TriStar Home Entertainment
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