This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

A Major Disappointment

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I had high hopes for this film, as it was based on a beautifully crafted, dry novel by Cormac McCarthy. Whose usual habit is to focus immensely on the harsh reality and depravity which often comes with human existence. I did not get the same enthralling sensation watching the film as I did when reading the novel. The film lacked in the quality which came with reading the novel and was utterly frustrating to view. Not to mention the fact that the novel was largely a coming of age text, as the two main protagonists were supposed to be 16 years old, however in the film they looked like they were in their mid thirties. In saying that, the film blatantly ignored that aspect of the original text. Don't watch the film if you've read the novel, it'll disappoint you.

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.

The book is great and Billy Bob was a good fit for it, but producer Harvey Weinstein screwed it all up. He wanted a two hour cut, even though from the offset it was clear the story needed a three hour epic sweep.So you really shouldn't watch this obviously truncated version (35% was cut). Scenes are rushed and a film that was supposed to capture the feel and romance of the landscape falls flat. Apparently Billy Bob has the correct edit on VHS in his home. Matt Damon says this cut is the best film he's ever been involved in. Eventually this film will be released, so you all should just wait for it. Billy Bob talks humorously about all this on cinemablend.The Weinsteins of this world are by no means villains, it takes a lot of hard work and guts to get where they have. But the same brute force that makes them successful can prove fatal where artistry is involved. Producers can be right - sometimes directors do need reigning in. Just not in this case. Harvey wasn't dealing with a wayward, self-indulgent director, and the story really did demand more time in its telling.

Billy Bob Thornton, who directed this masterpiece, knows all about authenticity, as he is the real thing himself. A good ole boy from Arkansas, he has seen the real world and knows that it ain't got palm trees along its drives. Nor does he hobnob with the phonies, and he correctly wonders why he isn't thrown out of Hollywood. This brave, albeit highly neurotic, man (who ever heard of a phobia about antiques before??!) has turned to some real folks to film a story about real folks. His greatest inspiration was to use the amazing Lucas Black to pay the young Devins. Despite the fact that Black has the deepest country-style Alabamba accent you could ever find these days (how well I remember it from the days when I used to know fellows like him), and it is a joy to hear (if you have your Alabamba accent decoding machine handy), so that he does not really belong in Texas, the equally brilliant inspiration of using Henry Thomas compensates, as he is a down-home Texan of just the right type. Matt Damon as the lead modifies his previously learned Tennessee accent and brings it slightly to the West, which is an incredible feat for a Bostonian! The performances in this powerful and gripping saga are intense and convincing, and everybody wins. Bruce Dern and Sam Shepard have terrific cameos, and Miriam Colon provides a wonderful performance in a key supporting role. Finally, the story ultimately works because of the superb acting of Penelope Cruz. She is perfectly in her element here as a sizzling Mexican beauty, and the intensity of her passion gives the film the final thing it needed. The dialogue in this film has a wonderful sensitivity to dialect, and there are dozens of touches of phraseology which only a practiced ear could have mastered, - genuine ways of saying things down South which no one from outside the region could possibly know and appreciate. I only wish that more viewers of this film could appreciate just how authentic it really is in terms of the characters, the action, and the dialogue. People these days are all wrapped in bubble-wrap, and have no contact with reality because they live in sanitized suburbs and go to those sterile places called malls (which have destroyed America). Some of the people who have written bad reviews of this film have clearly never met anybody like the people in this film and think the whole thing is made up. It sho' nuff ain't. It may all have died out now (the story is set in 1949), but it was real once, that kind of thing and those kind of folks, and get your heads round that, you spoilt and out of touch softies with your computer games and Ipods. This passionate, desperate story may 'only' be a story, but it is grounded in real types and it says more than any hundred Hollywood movies. It is ironical that Matt Damon, so genuine and moving in his performance here, has been turned into Jason Bourne who has no personality, and that Penelope strayed for a while into the clutches of that arch-phoney of all time, Tom Cruise. He never deserved her! If you want to know about 'the real thing' watch this.