Jean-Marc Barr is a middle-aged, alcoholic Jack Kerouac trying to outrun his demons in Michael Polish's deft adaptation of the writer's 1962 novel. Five years after On the Road transformed the literary landscape and made Kerouac the reluctant face of the Beat Generation, he returns to San Francisco to reunite with old friends like Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Anthony Edwards), Michael McClure (Balthazar Getty), and Neal Cassady (Josh Lucas) and to attempt to get sober in an isolated Big Sur cabin. Polish extracts poetry from the writer's sad late novel that tracks the start of his physical decline and the fraying of once-tight friendships. Barr is terrific both in performance and in voice-over as he narrates directly from Kerouac's book and he is surrounded by exceptionally well-cast support, including Patrick Fischler as Lew Welch, Henry Thomas as Philip Whalen, Radha Mitchell as Neal's wife Carolyn, and Kate Bosworth as Billie, the woman both Jack and Neal love. Lucas's Cassady in particular is a revelation, perfectly embodying the physicality, speed-rapping charm, and sexual charisma Kerouac describes. Polish's seventh collaboration with cinematographer M. David Mullen yields spectacular results both in the paradise on earth that is Big Sur and in San Francisco, where locations include Tenderloin tenements, City Lights Bookstore, and Tosca Cafe. Big Sur is only the third screen adaptation of one of Kerouac's books and it proves that the writer's dense, language-driven novels can, indeed, be gloriously cinematic.