Cormac McCarthy has made a career of spinning ugliness into beauty, from the apocalyptic desolation of The Road to the violent, doomed love story of All the Pretty Horses. This summer, James Franco has adapted McCarthy's 1973 novel about a vigilante mob hunting an alleged rapist and murderer in the wilds of east Tennessee and, like the book, Franco's film is a bleak testament to the evil inherent in man. But it's the author's sparse, evocative prose that makes the reader keenly aware of the pain and loneliness of these desperate characters. We know from the start that things won't end well; in McCarthy's world, they never do. And that's why we read him.
— Jordan Foster
