Nothing has made me realize how long I've been going to the movies than seeing Bruce Dern, once every director's favorite psycho, in the role of a sage elder judge. Like Dern, most of the actors are presented as icons. Cruz's Alejandra stands for carnal purity, Blades' patron for power and privilege and Maria Colon's matriarch for the scheming power left women in a world ruled by men.

The only lifts in the acting come from Lucas Black as the young troublemaker Blevins and Henry Thomas as Cole's sidekick Lacey. Without any fuss, Black creates a character whom it's impossible to resolve your feelings about -- a naive tantrumy kid, already infected with a killer's remorselessness and unable to see that he provokes the violence that accompanies him. And Thomas, a fine actor, brings some humor and spark to the role of Lacey. Thomas' emotions manage to work their way past the character's laconic demeanor, if only just in the worried set of his jaw or the question mark in his dark eyes. Thomas gets past the limitations of McCarthy's macho fantasy world to create a living, breathing human being.

Damon doesn't, though there's nothing technically wrong with his performance. He's more than suited to playing an upright kid dedicated to decency, honesty and hard work. The trouble is that those kinds of roles are usually unbearably dull. They're the very sort of parts that, in just a few years, turned Gary Cooper from a sexy young star to a dependable, "aw shucks," stick-in-the-mud leading man. The same thing could happen to Damon if he's not careful.

The sincerity of his acting is never in doubt here -- the all-American straitjacket that sincerity is binding him in is all too clear. A comedy might allow him to relax and fool around. He has become so willing to lend himself out as the clean, upstanding American in movies like this one and "Saving Private Ryan" that he barely seems to exist in the present anymore. His performance in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was unconvincing because while he has sharpness and even cruelty in him, he doesn't suggest the hidden recesses of psychosis that the role requires.

The immediacy Damon had in "Good Will Hunting," "Courage Under Fire" and "Geronimo" (an upright-young-man role that played as a person, not a conceit) and in his scenes in "Dogma" feels as if it's receding before our eyes. The horrible thing about that is that recessiveness is exactly right for this inflated western pulp. From what remains and the seriousness accorded every pause and scowl, I can only guess that Thornton's four-hour version was an attempt to be worthy of the vision of McCarthy. The worst thing you can say about "All the Pretty Horses" is that, even at two hours, Thornton succeeds.

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