ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (2000)

Cormac McCarthy’s bleak American fables have proved tough to adapt on film.  A situation that only makes this near miss/lost opportunity harder to accept.  So don’t!  Good enough as is, HORSES improves significantly with a bit of creative viewing; possibly into the best McCarthy on film.  Backstory, please.  (Note: the following is also largely creative!)  After SLING BLADE/’96*, Billy Bob Thornton’s over-praised directing debut over-performed, distributor MiramaX (at the time Harvey Weinstein & Co.) upped his budget by a factor of sixty (that’s 6-0, from one mill to about 57 mill) for this second gig, McCarthy’s shockingly effective tale of Texas buds from separate horse ranches trying their luck South of the Border, along with a tagalong wild boy picked up along the way.  And that’s when things really go south . . . not only directionally.  A stolen horse upsets all plans and leads to multiple murders, a ‘dirty’ execution, death rituals inside a vicious prison culture and true love to complicate/compensate all issues.  Thornton does make a few odd choices.  Should the cinematography be as lush as one of those Robert Redford Oscar-bait films?  Where’s the scrubby Texas ranch land?  Excellent as he is, there’s not a Texas bone in Matt Damon’s body.  He looks entirely built thru hockey practice.  BFF Henry Thomas far more Texan.  How do wads of cash appear at unlikely moments?  And the grand pash between Damon & Penélope Cruz comes off as a trope too far.  But there could be a simple explanation to these faults; apparently, the hand of Harvey Weinstein took over in post-production and forty to fifty minutes of material was tossed.  (Check out the subliminal flashbacks at a railroad stop to spot moments not seen earlier, probably left on the cutting room floor.)  Hard to call the re-editing sabotage as the film and its fatalistic view of man & destiny still come thru.  But a truly great work seems to have been purposefully occluded in a manner not unheard of by those who had sold their cinematic souls to the Weinsteins.  Thornton’s directing career never recovered.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Great to see Bruce Dern finally show up in a neat little part.  He even gets to play a good guy!  ALSO: Click on the poster above to expand and check out the astonishingly feeble quotes.  And this a quick replacement poster to help a film struggling at the box-office.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Here’s our outlier post on SLING BLADE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/sling-blade-1996.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Oscar’d for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS/’91, scripter Ted Tally also lost all career momentum after this; a mere two credits over the next two & a half decades.