All the Pretty Horses film review

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ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

With All The Pretty Horses director Billy Bob Thornton achieves two remarkable feats: he has made a film that is arguably better than his excellent directorial debut Sling Blade, and he has finally proved that Matt Damon can indeed act, a fact that has been hotly debated over the last three years.

This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's best-selling novel is an unashamed love story with a greatly enjoyable narrative. John Grady Cole (Damon) and Lacey Rawlins (Thomas) are childhood friends, would-be rancheros and part-time existentialists in post-war Texas. Searching for some sort of meaning to their lives, they set out on horseback from their native state intent on making new lives for themselves in Mexico. Along the way they encounter another young stray, Blevins (Lucas Black), who looks like trouble but nevertheless joins the duo on their journey southbound.

Upon their arrival in Mexico, Blevins confirms his potential for trouble by losing his horse, clothes and weapons in a thunderstorm. With only two horses between the three of them it becomes imperative to retrieve the lost animal, but doing so has far-reaching consequences. Cole and Rawlins ditch Blevins and find employment as handlers on the estate of one Senor Rocha (Ruben Blades), and their initial success in taming wild mustangs makes them the toast of the farm.

Nevertheless, trouble is at hand and it comes in the shape of Rocha's beautiful daughter Alejandra (Cruz). Damon's first sight of her is a classic coup de foudre, and the shot of him literally gobsmacked by a fleeting glimpse of her beauty is one of the film's many highpoints. Of course, an affair between a foreign farmhand and the owner's daughter can only result in disaster and this proves to be the case. The inevitable reappearance of Blevins, now imprisoned as a horse thief, further increases Cole's and Rawlins' woes.