All the Pretty Horses (2000)
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 99
Fresh: 32 | Rotten: 67
This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel comes off as rather flat and uninvolving. Scenes feel rushed and done in shorthand, and the romance between Damon and Cruz has no sparks.
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Critic Reviews: 34
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 26
This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel comes off as rather flat and uninvolving. Scenes feel rushed and done in shorthand, and the romance between Damon and Cruz has no sparks.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 11,662
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Movie Info
Director Billy Bob Thornton explores coming of age in this Western based on Cormac McCarthy's prize-winning novel of the same name. John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) and Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas) are young Texan men who seek a more fulfilling life as cowboys in the slowly fading Old West, circa 1949. One night, the duo head for Mexico in hope of finding some adventure and employment, and along the way run into Blevins (Lucas Black), an even younger drifter who has supposedly stolen a horse from
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Cast
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Matt Damon
John Grady Cole -
Henry Thomas
Lacey Rawlins -
Lucas Black
Jimmy Blevins -
Penelope Cruz
Alejandra -
Ruben Blades
Rocha -
Robert Patrick
Cole -
Julio Oscar Mechoso
Captain -
Miriam Colon
Alfonsa -
Bruce Dern
Judge -
Sam Shepard
J.C. Franklin -
Jesse Plemons
Young Grady
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All Critics (115) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (67) | DVD (12)
Damon is 30 and Cruz will soon be 27, and they look it. And there goes the drama.
McCarthy's novel employs the coming of age narrative in service of his sanguineous spiritual vision, and for the film to renounce that philosophy is to give up its soul and be rendered lifeless.
Lovely but disengaging, mysterious but uninvolving, physical but strangely remote.
What is on screen is impressive, even with the sense of something missing.
Not a disaster as rumored to be, just a disappointing adaptation of a great novel. Thonrton fails to dramatize in visually or dramatically satisfying ways the hero's odyssey from innocence to experience, from childish game to acting with honor.
I'm a fan of all involved, but this is a really tough watch.
The movie that resulted from the studio's demand for cuts ... is a big-screen Cliff's Notes for the novel.
Despite a script which remains faithful to the sparse language of the novel, and some breathtaking cinematography, the whole production feels too lethargic.
Part elegy, part romance, and part myth, it's a sweeping paean to the lost West, a dreamy chronicling of the end of an age.
The result of what would appear to be a great deal of effort and some horribly misguided conviction is an extremely slow-moving train wreck.
Audience Reviews for All the Pretty Horses
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Jimmy Blevins: At the gettin place.
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- John Grady Cole: Lacey once asked me if I thought God looks out for people. I guess he does. I say he's just about got to. I don't believe we'd make it a day otherwise.
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- Judge: The trouble with a liar is that he can't remember what he said.
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- Alejandra: I have no honor but my promise. If I lose that, what am I?
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- Alejandra: I didn't know that my father could stop loving me. I didn't know that he could. Now I know.
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- Alfonsa: In the end, Mr. Cole, we all get cured of our sentiments. Those whom life doesn't cure, death will.
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Latest News on All the Pretty Horses
September 13, 2007:
Viggo Mortensen to Walk The Road?The film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning, Oprah-certified novel, The Road, may have...
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Foreign Titles
- De si jolis chevaux (FR)


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