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THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD gets Capone'd!!!
The only thing longer than this title is the movie itself, which clocks in at a solid two hours and 40 minutes, but most of that passes by unnoticed and without too much pain. With a well-dusted and rock-solid cast, this impressionistic look at the final months in the life of the outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt, playing the criminal/folk hero as a paranoid, often-cruel and wise creature) before he was shot in the back by one of his own gang, a man named Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). Adapted from Ron Hansen's novel, this version of the Jesse James story casts Ford as his greatest fan, a teenage kid who read all the pulp adventure stories and the James Gang and wanted to be just like Jesse, America's first real celebrity.
The idea of being in the game wasn't that far-fetched, since Ford's older brother Charley (Sam Rockwell) was already a member. But the younger Ford was squirrelly and easily hurt when his hero poked fun at him. This is Affleck's breakthrough year, no questions asked. He's gone from being a strong supporting player in such films as Ocean's 11 (and its sequels) to lead actor in a single year. Wait a few weeks and check him out in Gone Baby Gone, directed by his brother Ben. He's even better in that film, but in Jesse James, he's no less hypnotic. The kid is a nervous bag of lightening that can barely keep from bursting out of his own skin. But once he makes the decision to betray his hero, he changes. I'm not saying the transformation is one that makes him more confidence, but it's clear that Ford must kill James off in his head as his lifelong hero before he can put a bullet in the back of his head.
But I'm not talking about the most interesting aspect of Jesse James, the exquisite nature of the filmmaking. From the sweeping yet sad landscapes as filmed by master cinematographer Roger Deakins to the eerie score by Nick Cave to the relaxed direction by New Zealand's Andrew Dominik (whose only other film was Eric Bana breakthrough Chopper) to the effective book-on-tape-style narration by Hugh Ross, this movie has the feel, look, and leisurely pacing of a work made in the last Golden Age of filmmaking in the 1970s. Terrence Malick's name has already been evoked by other critics, but that doesn't quite fit in my book. There's almost too much going on here for Jesse James to quality as Malick-esque, but strictly in terms of the look of the film, the comparison is justified. The infrequent punctuations of extreme violence are shocking to be sure, and they come in places you'd least expect them. But what's more shocking are people's reactions to the violence once the shooting is stopped. With one notable exception, there is no mourning among these people. Emotional pain isn't part of their makeup.
Once James is dead, the film goes on to show us what happened to Ford and his brother, and those sequences are just as exciting as his limited time with the gang. The film is filled with surprisingly solid actors is very small parts. Mary-Louise Parker (in an almost-wordless role as James' wife, Sam Shepherd (as Jessie's brother Frank), Zooey Deschanel (who doesn't arrive until the film's final 15 minutes), Jeremy Renner, and Paul Schneider come and go at the whim of the story. Some character arcs are seen to some kind of conclusion; others vanish without explanation, much like life. The Assassination of Jesse James doesn't feel exactly like life, but it captures the essence of a time and place that is probably best left long behind us but still worth reflecting upon in fantastic films like this one. Great as a narrative, a work of suspense, and as an artistic vision, the only thing this film doesn't feel like is a Western, and that's no failing of the filmmakers. Jesse James goes transcends the Western genre from the first frame, and I'm grateful for that. There's a lot more going on here, and you owe it to yourself to check it out.
-Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
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I'm gonna shoot you all FIRST in the back, just like Robert Ford!
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Most definitely not for everyone though. Plenty of people are going to claim it's "boring" which it most definitely is not. Slow, yes, but never boring.
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Can't wait to see this!
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but somehow I either missed or they didn't mention that Rockwell and Zooey Deschneal were in this, that just peaks my interest even more. Andrew Dominick was enough, then to add in good performances by Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt and then the supporting cast they have aorund them, this should be a very interesting movie.
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Puts the kick-ass back into assassination.
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He was born in NZ, but lived his entire life in Australia.
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I would pay to see the LucasArts game "OUTLAWS" turned into a live-action movie, complete with Clint Bajakian's fantastic score. Too many times today the western is turned into a deep, psychological journey into the psyche of the protagonist/antagonist. Nobody just makes a straightforward good guys versus bad guys western anymore. These days there has to be this hazy question of "What IS good? What IS evil?" and that's fine, but I miss the cut-and-dried situations in classic westerns.
Look at the "dollars" series... He may be an anti-hero, but the Man With No Name is clearly the good guy. He's clearly the lesser of the world's evils. He's very clearly facing bad people who are REALLY bad people. There's no deep question of what lies in his soul or drives him to do what he does-- He just IS, and he just DOES, and that's good enough to make a story out of.
Ever since "Unforgiven", though, people don't seem to want to make westerns with that kind of simple ethical situation. Everything is in shades of grey now. NOBODY is good. NOBODY is blatantly evil. EVERYBODY has some complicated back-story that explain away why they do the things they do. The last decent good guys/bad guys spaghetti-style western was probably Sam Raimi's "The Quick and The Dead."
So take the script from LucasArts' "OUTLAWS", and use the exact same score as written by Clint Bajakian, and give us the simple story of a retired Marshall whose daughter is kidnapped because he refuses to give up his land, forcing him to hunt down the bad guys and exact bloody revenge until his daughter is freed and the greedy industrialist is finished. Give me Native Americans who don't weep about the plight of their people, and instead just try to kill the hero (and bear in mind, I *am* part Cheyenne). Give me Mexicans who are dirty, dastardly banditos who give no quarter in a gunfight. Give me over-the-top villains with quirky behavior. Give me twitchy cowards who run when they're about to get caught. Give me the story of One Man fighting an army of low-level stooges, badass leaders, and the final mastermind, all without much more than his skill at shooting people and his love for his daughter.
Give me a western that doesn't try to ask ANY deep psychological questions, or get under a character's psyche. Give me a western where the good guys kill the bad guys until there are no more bad guys. -
brilliant
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Are they going to go with a Wide Release yet?
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I drove from San Diego to Hollywood to see this film. It was worth the drive. Excellent, excellent film. I've been waiting for the film to be released wide so I could take my brother to see it. Still waiting. It looks like they just did a limited release so the film could compete in the oscars. YOU HAVE A GOOD FILM WB. don't just dump it and then pull it after a couple of weeks. lates.
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I've been waiting and waiting for this to open.
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How nice it must be to live in your world, where romanticism is dealt with boorish crutidy, brash disdain, and an immaturely closed mind. Even more fetching is the naive notion that your brand of humanism is actually modern, evolved, and cultured despite being as old as Plato. Older, really.
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Hollywood ain't makin' westerns. I rarely comment, but I hope someone will read that Tombstone was (unless somebody can recommend one I haven't seen)the last decent, true great western. Don't use the John Wayne motif for a morality play.
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Frankly, your entire response just proves how small-minded you really are. Worse, you seem to have a limited grasp on the very definition of romanticism and give some sort of half-assed rant about The English Patient v. Beautiful Mind. I really have neither the time nor the inclination to educate you on romanticism, its origins, or the specific context of heroism/nationalism to which zero corpse and myself were referring. As for a "fortune cookie" reference to Plato, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your hostile attitudes to those of differing opinion and obvious superiority complex towards your own philosophy is inherrently Platonic (see philosopher king).I will leave you with this, MOM: just because someone enjoys the romantic aesthetic in their stories does not mean they are stupid, inferior, or blissfully unaware of life's more varying greys; they arent children. They are simply people who enjoy a good dose of escapist fare laced with the sort of idealic fanfare that we dont get enough of in the real world. Its a recharge for us, MOM, so that we can remain as optimistic and positive a people as we can. Its something like church, I suppose, if that helps the understanding. Idealism, and other romantic aspects, has its place, MOM, and stories are most deffinitely one of them.
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Keep in mind that I'm not knocking Jesse James, but rather, your attitude to those who crave something different. And whether you choose to see Jesse James as a glaring beacon in a sea of mediocrity, people like myself see it as yet another post-modern take on the western genre, something akin to the "documentary-style" modern war films, replete with timidity, greyness, and "shakey-cam," that have been churned out ad nauseum.Don't get me wrong, romanticism isnt exactly new, either. Why, many of its aspects are as old as the first cave-men tellin the very first bed-time story in which Grog bagged his first mammoth while fending off a pack of saber-tooth wolves. But idealic notions, for all their antiquity, are no less neccessary in our "modern" world.
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burn
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Your ideas are everything that is wrong with modern story telling.
That said 'Outlaws' was a lot of fun.
We just slogged through a glut of Superhero movies, patriotic propaganda movies, etc etc, every once and a while, isn't it ok to define a character through more than his twisty moustache? -
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