Jamie
A lot of the books we are “reading” for this cycle are more trash than treasure. And when we get a classic like The Three Musketeers, it’s more of a joke that Kiefer Sutherland is staring at me from the cover as I read it. All the Pretty Horses is a real outlier. Not only is the book amazing (controversial opinion alert), but the cover is actually not all that embarrassing to have staring back at you. It’s a serious take at the adaptation, although Billy Bob Thornton and Matt Damon seem to disagree. As for my memory of this film in BMT lore… I actually don’t have any. I don’t really recall this movie coming out. Probably with the bad press a-swirling and being recut to resemble a romance western film, we took a look at it and passed hard in favor of What Women Want, a true Christmas classic.
To recap, our boy John Grady Cole is sad. Sad because his family ranch is being sold off by his absentee mother. His dad is traumatized by the war and his Grandpa has died and everything is terrible. Time to head down to Mexico with his friend Rawlins to find the old cowboy way. They pick up a crazy kid, Blevins, on the way and work their way towards the ranching area. Blevins ends up losing his horse and gun during a thunderstorm and goes a bit crazy when he realizes they were sold off in a nearby town. He steals back his horse and makes a run for it, leaving Cole and Rawlins to continue onto the ranch on their own. After arriving and getting some low level jobs, Cole decides they should show their chops by breaking a group of wild horses. The boss is impressed and moves Cole into the horse business and uses him to help breed a stallion he bought. Meanwhile Cole finds himself falling for the boss’s daughter, Alejandra. The boss and his aunt don’t like this and ultimately give Cole and Rawlins over to the Mexican police, who are looking for them in connection to Blevins. Ultimately, they are sent to jail and Blevins is murdered. Both Rawlins and Cole barely survive attacks in the prison before the aunt helps free them. Returning for Alejandra, Cole confronts the aunt who admits she only freed them on the condition that they leave and claims Alejandra has agreed not to see him. Cole scoffs like a scoffer and contacts Alejandra and meets her at a train station where they make sweet, sweet love. He thinks they are gonna run away together given the lovemaking and such, but she’s like “I can’t” and leaves him. Jaded, Cole returns to the Mexican police to get their horses back and does so by taking the corrupt captain hostage. In the process he’s injured and barely survives his return to the US. There he returns Rawlins’s horse. THE END.
I mean, come on. I kinda love that this movie ended up qualifying and we are here watching it for BMT, because it is simply not that bad of a movie. In fact I would say it’s a pretty good movie. Not even really that bad of an adaptation, despite what Thornton and Damon say. I can see their point, that the book does not have a particularly romantic tone, so having a producer try to cut your film up to be something it’s not is probably pretty annoying. But it doesn’t really mean the movie actually is bad. This definitely seems influenced largely by just how beloved the book is. I also think the bad press by Thornton and Damon probably wasn’t helping, nor was the involvement of Weinstein, who was deep in his Oscar campaign shenanigans at the time. But I very much enjoyed watching this movie. I also think this is some of the finest work Damon has done. Showing some real acting chops. Henry Thomas is also pretty great. I liked it!
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me working haaaard on the ranch when Penelope Cruz rides by and my eyes bug out like a cartoon character, and then my head turns into a wolf’s head and I howl and my tongue rolls out on the ground.* Let’s go!
The Good? I actually liked this movie quite a bit. It is a faithful adaptation of what is something of a revisionist western. I do think the back third is a mess, but the first third especially does a lot to translate what makes the book great into a movie. Specifically, the thing I like about the book (which shares a lot of DNA with some of McMurtry’s westerns) is the idea of the “true cowboy” in post-WWII America and the question of whether the cowboy can or should exist. The image of a cowboy riding along a highway basically. I also think Damon and Henry Thomas were much better than expected. I had figured going in the acting was going to be a sore spot, but it really isn’t the issue.
The Bad? The only major issue is that every so often you can see the “indulgent” version of the movie leaking through, especially in the back third. There is a moment where a guy is just like dancing while Damon is on the phone and then it is suggested it is all in Damon’s head. And then soon after there is a slow motion shot at the train platform of a man picking up a little girl in his arms. Both shots are absurd. Amateurish, almost. I have a feeling that the version Billy Bob Thornton showed to the executives which got a bee in their bonnet was the version with like 60 other weird artsy nonsense shots like that. The edit is likely just stripping all of that stuff out. The back third suffers for it, it feels incredibly rushed and if you hadn’t read the books I can’t imagine it makes any sense whatsoever.
The BMT? Nope, I think this movie is good. As far as the difference between critical receptions then and now this is a decent example. The movie might not be the best film in the world, but it would get like 60-70% on RT now. It is a very nice looking western and a faithful adaptation of a beloved book. The idea that it would get trounced by critics is just impossible.
The Rewatchable? What aged the worst? Just giving Penelope Cruz nothing to do in the movie, seemed to genuinely derail her American career a bit. The that guy award kind of goes to Henry Thomas, Elliott from E.T., who I thought had basically retired from acting in the ‘80s, but nope. Still acts. Out of left field, the overacting award? Billy Bob Thornton gets a rare Overdirecting nod. The occasional directorial flourish he threw into the film never failed to make it worse.
I do like this for a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Mexico, it is a very Mexico film in the end. I actually don’t think the twist (that Penelope Cruz decides to never see Damon again as per her agreement with her father) is bad, genuinely quite good. It being a “revisionist romance” would be one of my hot takes. The movie is Good, through and through.
Cheers,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 