From the Cormac McCarthy novel, a post-WWII cowboy movie, not quite a purebred Western, a little like The Hi-Lo Country. A little (including in that scope the scrumptious Penelope Cruz), but not a lot. And it is, whatever its constitution, more than director Billy Bob Thornton can chew. The opening stretch, in which a dispossessed Texas rancher and his faithful sidekick drift across the Rio Grande looking for work on a baronial south-of-the-border spread, picking up for part of the way a tag-along teenager with a big hat, big horse, and big gun, is leisurely and enjoyable, notwithstanding some ominous tremors of artiness. The horses are, as advertised, good-looking; and Matt Damon and Henry Thomas look good in the saddle. But with the coming of the forbidden romance (the noblewoman and the hired hand, or, to lift the title of an old Gary Cooper vehicle, the cowboy and the lady), and the going into and getting out of a hellhole penitentiary, the storytelling becomes abrupt, choppy, perfunctory, bare-bones, as if running headlong toward a deadline. Word has it that the movie underwent heavy editing. That word is easy to believe. Lucas Black, Ruben Blades, Bruce Dern. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd