All the Pretty Horses

Beautifully made but badly paced adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's classic coming of age novel. Damon is John Grady, a young man left to fend for himself after his estranged mother sells his dead grandfather's ranch. With his best friend Lacy Rawlins (Thomas) in tow, the pair set off for Mexico in search of the old cowboy ways. Literary adaptations are tricky affairs and although Thornton does a nice job, it's also a flawed one. It's obvious his original vision was one a lot longer than the studio demanded and All the Pretty Horses suffers for it. Lurching too quickly from one scenario to the next, the lyricism of McCarthy's book is lost in a bid to include all of the major incidents.