Dir. Andrew Dominik, US, 2007, 160 mins
Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell
Review by Carol Allen
The long winded title, which is reflected in the length of the film, refers to one of the dime novels of the Old West that chronicled the exploits of the James Gang in 1870s America and, in this case, the death of their "star", outlaw Jesse James.
Robert Ford (Affleck) is nineteen years old and Jesse's greatest fan. He inveigles his way into the gang, tagging along on their last big train robbery in 1881, when Jesse is thirty four but, in terms of the times, regarded as a middle aged man. As his friendship with Jesse (Pitt) develops, Ford comes to realise that his destiny is to kill the man he once idealised and he becomes an agent for Pinkertons, the outlaw hunting agency, which is on Jesse's trail.
This is an exceptionally good looking film. Roger Deakins' cinematography is stunning with its sense of the never ending landscape, the movement of the corn in the fields and the changing clouds chasing across the sky. The hold-up of the train with Jesse outlined against the smoke is a totally breathtaking image. The film also has a great sense of authenticity in its re-creation of the daily life of the time and the homes the characters live in: the staircases they walk up, the beds they sleep in, chairs they sit on, tables they eat their meals at. It is, however, very slow and rather dreamy and imprecise in its telling of the actual story, which does not have enough meat on its bones to fill over two and a half hours.
While no fault of the actors, the characters are too thinly drawn and the members of the gang, apart from Jesse himself, are not very well delineated. The strongest to emerge is the aptly named amorous Dick (Paul Schneider), who has an im pressively wide vocabulary and a voracious appetite for women. His seduction in the privy of the wife of an old man, who is sheltering the gang, is one of the liveliest scenes in the early part of the film. Sam Shephard makes an impress ion as Frank James, Jesse's elder brother, but disappears without explanation and when it finally becomes clear that Charley (Rockwell), who is also tagging along, is Robert's brother, the actor gets a chance to put some flesh on his character's bones. Even Robert, who is ostensibly the protagonist, is more a collection of characteristics - obsessive, outsider, adoring etc - than a flesh and blood character. While Pitt is very good as Jesse – he seems to have learned the Michael Caine lesson of the value of stillness, which gives him great presence – the character remains an enigma, even in his sometimes startling brutality. One can only assume that at times he has gone mad. The women in the story are mere ciphers, providing food and domestic or sexual services in the background. Even Mary-Louise Parker as Jesse's wife has only one good scene, when her husband is killed.
Although the legend of Jesse James had him as a wronged Confederate soldier striking back against the Union, there are strangely only a couple of references to the Civil War, which finished only 16 years before the action of the film begins and which all the characters would have experienced as either children or young men. The outcome of the story, which happens around half an hour before the end, is no surprise because of the title. As it turns out, that last section after the shooting of Jesse is the most interesting, dealing as it does with the public reaction to Jesse's assassination and the effect on Robert Ford himself of the deed that made him infamous. It also includes an amusing cameo from Nick Cave as the singer of the ballad of Jesse James and his demise. One is tempted to think that the story of the aftermath of Jesse's death told with flashbacks and making more of Ford's relationships with Charley and showgirl Dorothy (Zooey Deschanel in another telling, last minute cameo) might have made a more gripping film.
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