Espiritu Salvaje (All the Pretty Horses)

Starring:Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, PenÃ©lope Cruz, J.D. Young, Laura Poe, Sam Shepard, Robert Patrick, Lucas Black (II), Yvette Diaz, Imelda Colindres, Augustin Solis, RubÃ©n Blades, Elizabeth Ibarra, Miriam Colon, Lonnie Rodriguez, Raul Malo, Fredrick Lopez, Ferron Lucero Jr., Manuel Sanchez (II), Katie Harro
Director: Billy Bob Thornton
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's award-winning novel, All the Pretty Horses cries for epic length but runs only 112 minutes for theatrical release. Drastically shortened during a lengthy stretch between production and release, this operatic drama feels as if huge chunks are missing, and what remains are fragments of a masterpiece that might have been. Unless a more definitive version is revealed, we must settle for this faint echo of McCarthy's ambitious narrative, in which dispossessed Texas rancher John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) ventures to Mexico in 1949 to revive his fading dreams of cowboy glory. With best friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas), Cole's odyssey takes him from youthful idealism to rugged, often horrific, and ultimately ennobling tests of integrity.

Amazon.com

Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's award-winning novel, All the Pretty Horses cries for epic length but runs only 112 minutes for theatrical release. Drastically shortened during a lengthy stretch between production and release, this operatic drama feels as if huge chunks are missing, and what remains are fragments of a masterpiece that might have been. Unless a more definitive version is revealed, we must settle for this faint echo of McCarthy's ambitious narrative, in which dispossessed Texas rancher John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) ventures to Mexico in 1949 to revive his fading dreams of cowboy glory. With best friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas), Cole's odyssey takes him from youthful idealism to rugged, often horrific, and ultimately ennobling tests of integrity.

Customer Reviews:

this one's just awful..........2007-06-12

Not much I can say here that hasn't been said by others. "All the Pretty Horses" (the book) was one of the best novels to be written in the past 20 years. "All the Pretty Horses" (the movie) has been edited to a point where it makes no sense.

Also, John Grady and Alejandra are supposed to be 16 and 17 years old, respectively. In a coming-of-age story, that's kind of important. Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz are WAY too old for the roles.

What is UP with all the negative reviews ?!!.......2007-02-25

I think this is a good film as I explain below. Others on this review area disagree. I can only attribute the many negative reviews for this film to a few possibilities: The movie is certainly not as 'complete' as the book. As with any film-adaptation, the movie bears differences from the book ( though it follows the main theme and plot closely ). The main differences being that scenes had to be deleted from the movie that were in the book. Perhaps many reviewers had read the book and were disappointed by the differences. If the movie is viewed as its own entity, I believe it stands very well by itself and is a great work of art

Other reasons that I can only attribute the bad reviews to are these; Maybe the reviewers wanted the cowboy-main characters to be wise-crack, cocky, with-an-attitude kind of guys like sutherland and harrelson in "The Cowboy Way" and other modern westerns. Or, as other reviewers have said, this wasn't a predominately love-story movie, as perhaps billed.

In any event, All The Pretty Horses definitely makes my list of top movies I've ever seen. The main characters have a certain humility and quietness to their character and their way. I imagine this is the way men who roamed the range in the 1940's probably were - Not like today's urban, fast-talking, slick, always having a witty in-your-face comeback, like so many protanganists in movies today. It's refreshing to see the aforementioned humble and courageous type of character pitted against the unfairness of life.

This movie is about decisions. It is about events that we don't want to happen. That we may try to prevent. And then, when these events happen, more bad fortune follows....almost as we knew it would....and it does. This is the unfairness that is real life. But more than unfairness, the theme of courage and holding to one's honor culminate at the end of the movie.

The music is wonderful and appropriate for the western setting. The acting is very good. There is drama, action, the proper building of expectations and tension and then its resolution, and humorous scenes as well. I agree that the movie could have been longer as I was wanting to watch these characters more. But Hollywood wanted a nice, compact, 'western-romance'.....and Billy Bob, the director, wanted to tell his story of the novel on film.....the compromise that resulted was a shorter film than he wanted. Nonetheless, this film is a well-directed and powerful drama which gives life to the mythic frontiers of the old southwest.

McCarthy this ain't............2007-01-29

If you haven't read the book, you will have a much tougher time enjoying this as it is very difficult to follow standing on it's own. If you've read the book before you saw the movie, then feel perfectly free to B!tch about how it doesn't do any justice to McCarthy's novel, because it doesn't. This movie is flawed and edited to the point of incoherence, you are unable to connect with the characters if you are not already familiar with them. It might have one of the worst soundtracks for a piece of this magnitude that I have ever heard. The reason I am able to give it three stars is because I have read all of McCarthy's books and can find some level of enjoyment watching his work be produced visually, but it just doesn't hold up to the novel in any way. If you're expecting a good old love story, then this is definitely not for you. McCarthy doesn't write heartwarming happy-tales for young lovers. His work deals with grittiness, vast landscapes, morality, mortality, and manhood. I think this is actually the happiest of all of his stories, and it ain't that happy. I hope if they make the second book of the trilogy into a movie, which is actually better than this book, they get a production team capable of handling such a large quantity of material. Billy Bob is just not suited to handle something so big. His strength lies in smaller details and stories, like Sling Blade. The supporting cast is fine, however, and Damon as good of a performance as you could give for a flawed script and being miscast.
Their just aren't to many happy endings when it comes to Cormac McCarthy.

We all choose which horses we pursue.......2006-12-18

I recommend this movie because it touches on the following ideas:

1) In the course of your life, you we love someone more than they love you. They will not return your love, for any number of good reasons. This concept is illustrated in the main relationship between Matt Damon's and Penelope Cruz's characters.

2) You will make some promises in your youth, promises that seem like the best solution at the time. No matter how "good" or "moral" of a person you become, you will likely have to choose to break some of those promises, spoken and unspoken. And as you grow older, you will be defined not by whether you kept all your promises, because that is likely impossible, but rather by what concepts you ultimately choose to prioritize and to live by. Alejandra chooses to keep her spoken promise to her Aunt and to not to see or communicate with John Grady further. And Alejandro chooses to break her unspoken and spoken representations to John Grady that she would love him and be with him. And Alejandro also breaks any promises she may have ever made to herself to live free, to pursue her loves and aspirations, and to not repeat the mistakes of her mother's generation. As the Aunt states early in the film, women in that culture do not get the same freedoms and second chances as men. The women in that culture choose whether to acquiesce and promote those double standards or fight against them. Alejandro makes her choice.

3) You may not be able to achieve your own personal dreams or freedoms, but in understanding the pain involved in that concession, you will have tremendous motivation to take advantage of every opportunity to help others achieve their dreams and freedoms. John Grady is not able to get what he wants, but he takes risks to free the old man from his unfair prison, and he returns Rawlins' horse to him.

To be honest, I thought the cinematography was below average, the editing was not fluent, the movie is a little too long, and the shot framings were often 2-dimensional and too close. The opening lighting on the horses running at night looked like they were lit with giant spotlights - totally artificial and wrong for the time period the movie was set in. But I'm a sucker for stories with complex and intelligent moral reasoning, so I recommend this movie with a fast forward remote firmly in hand.

Beautiful, wrenching movie........2006-11-19

With great acting by Damon and company. I could wish for the directing to be a bit better -- probably the editing that was at fault. I could easily have watched another hour of this movie. It's possible that some of the bad reviews come from the promotion of All the Pretty Horses as a love story between Damon and Cruz. It simply isn't the focus of the movie. The focus is more about what you love and lose, your home, your horses, your friends, your honor, and the west itself, being sold to developers at the time.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Battle Athletes Victory: The Last Dance

Murder Between Friends

Code Hunter (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Men

Golden Tales 2 - George A. Romero