It's post-war Texas. Matt Damon and his buddy team up and ride across the Rio Grande to seek their fortunes. They meet, and lose, a sixteen-year-old companion along the way. They find a job at a Mexican horse ranch. The owner takes a shine to Damon, a buckaroo who knows his quarter horses.
Then, alas, buscar a la mujer. The owner's daughter, the delicious Penelope Cruz, shows up. She and Damon throw a few winks at one another and the next thing you know they're rolling around in the sack like two coyotes in heat. It's a fast, unexplored, and improbable romance. And, mind you, she is the owner's daughter and not meant for the likes of a handsome young Yanqui who owns nothing but his horse and saddle. Cruz's father and aunt get wind of this. Damon is warned but he cares not.
Pow -- Damon and his buddy are in a Mexican prison, charged with something or other. The sixteen-year-old wastrel they met on their way through the majestic mountains is also incarcerated, charged with the murder of two or three people, one of them a police officer. There is no capital punishment in Mexico, so after the corrections officers break the kids ankles they take him out in the desert and shoot him, while Damon and buddy watch helplessly.
The two Americans are bailed out by the wise and honorable and candid aunt of Penelope Cruz. Damon, alone, decides to return to the rancho and get it on again with Cruz. But he's brought before the stern aunt who tells him candidly that it's impossible. She gives him money and a horse and tells him to leave. Damon protests that he loves Cruz. "We all are cured of our sentiments," she tells him. "If life doesn't cure us, death will." It's a pretty good exchange. I assume it was lifted intact from McCarthy's novel.
The performances are pretty good too. Both Damon and his amigo, Henry Thomas, are convincing as polite but determined Texas youngsters, the kind who "won't change my mind because it's made up, and I'm not the kind of guy who changes his mind once it's made up" -- to quote another Texas youngster who became president. They're well brought up. "Yes, sir." "No, sir." I don't know how Cormac McCarthy, born in Rhode Island and raised in Appalachia, could have pinned down Southwestern character so well.
Billy Bob Thornton's direction has it finer touches. He doesn't spell out the obvious for us. When the miscreant kid is taken out to be shot, the execution takes place off screen and we hear only two separate gunshots and we see only the expressions on the faces of Damon and Thomas.
At the same time I wish Thornton had been able to avoid three common clichés, despite their pedigrees: choker close ups (Sergio Leone), slow motion (Pekinpah), and freeze frames (Truffaut).
It's a long and languid tale of an adventurer barking his shins against reality. It starts slowly but it picks up momentum as it moves along. And each time we think we've reached a climax, there's another one around the corner. The final one is a conversation between a remorseful Damon and a gentle judge, Bruce Dern, and it seems anti-climactic because heretofore Damon hasn't shown the slightest regret at the mayhem he now confesses to and appears to regret.
Then, alas, buscar a la mujer. The owner's daughter, the delicious Penelope Cruz, shows up. She and Damon throw a few winks at one another and the next thing you know they're rolling around in the sack like two coyotes in heat. It's a fast, unexplored, and improbable romance. And, mind you, she is the owner's daughter and not meant for the likes of a handsome young Yanqui who owns nothing but his horse and saddle. Cruz's father and aunt get wind of this. Damon is warned but he cares not.
Pow -- Damon and his buddy are in a Mexican prison, charged with something or other. The sixteen-year-old wastrel they met on their way through the majestic mountains is also incarcerated, charged with the murder of two or three people, one of them a police officer. There is no capital punishment in Mexico, so after the corrections officers break the kids ankles they take him out in the desert and shoot him, while Damon and buddy watch helplessly.
The two Americans are bailed out by the wise and honorable and candid aunt of Penelope Cruz. Damon, alone, decides to return to the rancho and get it on again with Cruz. But he's brought before the stern aunt who tells him candidly that it's impossible. She gives him money and a horse and tells him to leave. Damon protests that he loves Cruz. "We all are cured of our sentiments," she tells him. "If life doesn't cure us, death will." It's a pretty good exchange. I assume it was lifted intact from McCarthy's novel.
The performances are pretty good too. Both Damon and his amigo, Henry Thomas, are convincing as polite but determined Texas youngsters, the kind who "won't change my mind because it's made up, and I'm not the kind of guy who changes his mind once it's made up" -- to quote another Texas youngster who became president. They're well brought up. "Yes, sir." "No, sir." I don't know how Cormac McCarthy, born in Rhode Island and raised in Appalachia, could have pinned down Southwestern character so well.
Billy Bob Thornton's direction has it finer touches. He doesn't spell out the obvious for us. When the miscreant kid is taken out to be shot, the execution takes place off screen and we hear only two separate gunshots and we see only the expressions on the faces of Damon and Thomas.
At the same time I wish Thornton had been able to avoid three common clichés, despite their pedigrees: choker close ups (Sergio Leone), slow motion (Pekinpah), and freeze frames (Truffaut).
It's a long and languid tale of an adventurer barking his shins against reality. It starts slowly but it picks up momentum as it moves along. And each time we think we've reached a climax, there's another one around the corner. The final one is a conversation between a remorseful Damon and a gentle judge, Bruce Dern, and it seems anti-climactic because heretofore Damon hasn't shown the slightest regret at the mayhem he now confesses to and appears to regret.