The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Review by Todd Hertz | posted 9/14/2007
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This month has seen something rare in today's movie climate: the theatrical release of two Westerns. However, while 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford share a genre, they are very different films.
In fact, each is actually comparable to its title: one short and quick, the other long and slow. 3:10 to Yuma has a clear destination while The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford meanders around the story of two men—and the event that connects them. In fact, while Yuma builds to an action boil, Jesse James begins with the notorious James brothers' last robbery and then goes into a long simmer to methodically study what led to James' death.
In a way, 3:10 to Yuma is what Warner Bros. wanted Jesse James to be: a taut and intelligent gunslinger. But that was not exactly the vision of director and screenwriter Andrew Dominik, who wanted his film to be a historical and epic character study. Apparently, Dominik won the tug of war. More art film than action film, Jesse James is more comparable to the quietly contemplative films of Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, The New World) than it is to most gunslinging westerns.
Brad Pitt as the outlaw Jesse James
Like many of Malick's works, Jesse James takes a historical moment and analyzes it in a study of the psychological, environmental and individual factors at play behind the action. For some, the film will be beautiful and poetic. To others, slow and pondering. I found it somewhere in the middle: a realistic and insightful character study that, despite an arrestingly powerful final third, isn't wholly satisfying because of a long middle, slow plotting, and a lack of story focus.
The plot meanders after the Blue Cut Train Robbery in the movie's first 30 minutes. Frank James (Sam Shepard) decides to call it quits and leaves his younger brother Jesse (Brad Pitt) because he finds him "peculiar." Jesse then separates from the Blue Cut crew to lay low. The film then takes a long, slow detour to follow the various gang members as they run, hide, betray one another, and try to make their own claims to glory.
What bogs the movie down seems to be Dominik's love affair with his material. He apparently found so much interesting history in his research on the James gang that he tries to tell too much. There are long, complicated subplots about various James associates that do not add to the film's true point: the eventual assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford.
However, when the movie does concentrate on James and Ford (Casey Affleck), it is one of the strongest, most palpable character studies I've seen. It's a credit to Pitt, Affleck and Dominik that these characters and their psyches become so real.
Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) and the man he admires, James
Affleck's Robert Ford is a weasely and arrogant young man. But Affleck's depth of character shows this arrogance is only so deep—it's actually a cover for a very tender ego and a thirst for affirmation. When his pride is bruised, he burns white hot with a viscous anger. Introduced into James' gang by his brother Charlie (the always entertaining Sam Rockwell), Robert is obsessed with James. In fact, James asks him at one point, "You wanna be like me or you wanna be me?" In truth, Ford just wants to be respected. And to him, the pinnacle of respect is Jesse James. "I've been a nobody all my life," Robert says. " [But] Jesse James has always seemed as a big as a tree." Eventually, Ford decides that cutting down that tree is how he can get the attention he deserves.
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