How The West Was Won-Again-The Film Adaptation Of Cormac McCarthy’s “All The Pretty Horses” (2000)-A Review

[When I, we, were kids in the old 1950s growing up poor black and white television neighborhood we were always looking for that cowboy angel Adonis that we kept seeing flickering on the screen. Now we were far from being able to articulate our dreams, too say cowboy angel Adonis, maybe our hurts too since we were pretty hard scrabble kids but we kept wondering about the times when serious cowboy angels roamed the earth, roamed the West chasing bad guys and saving towns, and later damsels. Mainly we were looking for somebody, some adult who was not relative or one of the seemingly bland working- class stuffs outside of the old neighborhood to look up to. Funny that quest lasted far longer than we, I would have thought which is something that that film under review made me think about, think about the bad boys, the golden-haired Adonis.

That figure ultimately had a name, the name Dean Moriarty who went under many aliases mostly usually Neal Cassady or Cassidy you would see it both ways depending on the scam he was running. John Carter, Bill Cadger, Reed Wade and a few other names come back from memory depending on time and place, but he was the real deal back when I came of age and was looking for the father I never knew, literally. Dean, let’s use that since a novelist, a “beat” novelist Jack Kerouac used it for his mad daddy character in a few of his travelogues was born in the West, born of woman it was said on the Denver and Rio Grande which may tell something about that wild boy streak we all put up with just to be around the guy, or be around guys who had been around him later after he fell down, after he was no longer on the bus as the expression went. Hoboes call it “catching the Westbound” but anyway you call it still means going under the cold, cold ground. Before your time.            

I met Dean on Larimer Street in Denver as he was hustling some young woman who looked like a college student, far from a person you would expect from his demeanor and looks to be bothered with.    

Beyond that she seemed far too young for him, although I later learned he was only in his late 20s but already the drugs and booze were showing some early signs of dissipation. He had been coming out of the Cattlemen’s Hotel which back in the 19^th century was the place where all serious cattle deals were flushed out. Now it was a place for cheapjack winos, con men, failed at something guys, a few house hookers and guys on the lam like Dean. But that later. He came out all dressed in cowboy hat, blonde if dirty hair, dungarees, a well-worn work shirt and rounded heels cowboy boots of no distinction. So naturally being a naïve Easterner who cowboy ideas were grafted from television once Dean got the brush-off from that co-ed I went up to him and asked him if he was a cowboy. (By the way that so-called brush-off was just that he was to meet her later in the day after she finished classes, yeah, Dean had his ways with women that is for sure).

That was how I met Dean. Here is how he became a friend, although not always a purebred one from his end that is for sure (“that is for sure” a good expression whenever you mention his name to me):

Dean said “yep” to the cowboy question and started giving a whole line of ragtime about how he had just gotten in from Wyoming (which he had) bringing in a heard of cows and all that kind of cowboy thin talk. As I kept asking more questions, how it was to run cattle, ride a horse, sleep in the cold outdoors overnight with just a bedroll, city-slicker stuff like that he got more pronounced in what his cowboy career was about. Before long though we were sitting in Larimer Lou’s Bar with him sucking down whiskies straight-at my expense. (That endless “no dinero” his constant expression even when he had money meant me, with “poco dinero” paid and after a while I didn’t even bother to ask him to pay and even if I had no money I would just put the bite on the next guy with some kale). That went on for a few hours until he popped up with the idea of “hot-wiring” a car so we could go up to Boulder to meet a couple of gals he knew there (he had apparently, at least this was his line, already had his way with that co-ed) and did I want to come along.

Sure. Dean eyed some car, a fast one, maybe a souped-up Mustang I am not that good even now on model identification and within about two seconds he was done. I wondered that night, maybe still do, how a lonesome trail cowboy knew how to do such an urban kind of trick. As I recall we went to Boulder, fast, always fast, met the girls, did our thing with them, and headed back to Denver. I stayed in Dean’s room at the Cattlemen for a few days, he was in and out like a bird of prey. One afternoon he said he was heading for California to get some dope, to make a score in Santa Rosa and be on something like easy street for a while. Did I want to go. Sure. I had done more than my share of dope at that time so that was no problem but I was surprised that cowboy angel Dean who had previously given no indication he was even interested in dope was up to this. Some kind of what would be called later a drugstore cowboy, things like that.              

Some time I will go into various trips to the coast, up and down the coast, maybe Mexico too although I still feel I need to be cautious telling those latter tales. There are too many of them to fit in what is essentially an introduction to a film about modern day cowboys and cowboy angels. Once we hit Santa Rosa, once we made score and Dean made some money (remember never shared with me-ever) one night when he, maybe me too, was high he let out a great big roar of a laugh that his cowboy angel talk was all bullshit, all an act. The only truthful part was that he was born on the Denver & Rio Grande by a woman who would abandon him to a drunken father who put him into an orphanage. He knew nothing about horses, never ridden one, or any of the other tall tales he had laid on me that first night and later. What he was and had served various terms in reform school in different states for stealing cars, “the greatest car driver in the world,” his term and mechanic too. That was probably closer to the truth, but you never knew with Dean when he was being straight with you, or blasting your brain.     

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

All The Pretty Horses, starring Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, Penelope Cruz, directed by Billy Bob Thornton, based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy   

Unlike another tale, a coming of age tale if you like, of the modern American West, of the Texas west,  The Last Picture Show, where I read the novel by Larry McMurtry first then viewed the film I have seen the film under review the adaptation of Cormac Mc Carthy’s All The Pretty Horses without having read the novel. But after watching the film I will make it my business to read the novel which deals with a different aspect of the West, the cowboy West when ranch life goes south on its main characters and they are left to fend for themselves. A task which in true Western fashion has them groping to stay alive, although that was a close thing.   

John Grady Cole (hey that is the way he introduced himself to one and all), played by Matt Damon, was career-less, cowboy career-less after his grandfather died and his mother decided to sell the ranch leaving this young cowboy with horses in his blood with no place to go. No place but to go looking for work south of the Rio Grande, south of the border down  Mexico way with his longtime fellow cowboy Lacey played by Henry Thomas.     

Whatever adventure, whatever expectations they had about making a living as ranch hands down in Mexico were disturbed along the way when they met a vagabond Blevens who was strange to say the least.  Along the way Blevens losed his horse and then finds it again at a ranch. This brings in the factor of horse-stealing which will drive a lot of the action in the film, and which is as heinous a crime in modern day Mexico (and Texas too) as in the old days when horse thieves were strung up in an age when to take a man’s horse was to take away his livelihood, his means of travel and his manhood. Along the way because John Grady and Lacey are tarred with the same brush as Blevens they will see just what that meant. They were able to get work at a huge ranchero where John Grady got special recognition by the owner for his keen eye for horse flesh. Along the way as well they wind up because of Bleven’s actions in custody and eventually in the “you don’t want to go there” penitentiary after a corrupt Mexican cop wasted the unfortunate Blevens while John Grady and Lacey watched helplessly. They survive the prison ordeal somehow and Lacey decides to head home. John Grady decided he had some unfinished business and was staying to pursue that.       

That unfinished business was as to be expected getting his girlfriend to go back to Texas with him. This girlfriend Alejandra, played by fetching Penelope Cruz, a firebrand and well worth taking some grief for was unfortunately for John Grady the daughter of the ranchero owner and so they were fated to part, fated in part because the price of getting John Grady and Lacey out of that “you don’t want to go there” prison was that she would not see him again, certainly would not go away with him. That was that.

On his way back home across the border with his horse, Lacey’s and the late Bleven’s in tow as some sort of symbol of the experiences he had down south of the border he is stopped in Texas and essentially accused of that same horse-stealing charge. He got out of trouble once he told his story to a judge and then meandered back to Lacey’s place with those three damn horses. Yeah, the modern West is a tough dollar for a cowboy loving man just like in the Old West. See this one for the pretty horses, pretty scenery and pretty Cruz.