Product Description: No Description Available. Genre: Westerns Rating: R Release Date: 5-FEB-2008 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com: Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a backshooting crony.
The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper (2000), was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise.
Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerizing in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a wellnigh-novelistic backstory for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie "Western" The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.
Still, the real costar is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few Westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson
Sloooow Movie Great cinematography, some of the best I've seen, however, the camera work is the movie's shining feature. The rest of the movie is extremely slow paced and almost boring.
Lyrical, Maddening, Beautiful, Tiresome, Unforgettable How a movie can be so many things is a testament to director Andrew Dominik's talent and vision, as well as to his inability to get out of his own way. What is ultimately an engrossing study of two flawed men on a collision course with destiny is weighed down by slow pacing and a failure to recognize that the characters, performances, and story are so powerful, that you don't need to remind the audience that you're taking your time to showcase your own brilliance and pretension. The movie is a cinematic jewel, capturing images that are mesmerizing in their beauty and highlighting the darkness in our hearts. The performances by everyone in this cast are out-of-this-world, but especially by the rich complexity given to the tragic Bob Ford by Casey Affleck. Your patience is paid off nicely in the end with the inevitable, and poetic, assassination and aftermath. You will be moved and you will never forget this journey you went on. You won't be able to stop thinking about it. The movie sticks with you in a way few films do. You will come to appreciate its beauty and courage, and maybe you'll wish that such an unforgettable story had been trusted by its chief storyteller. Maybe the movie is supposed to be a paradox, just as its main characters. Jesse James was psychotic, caring, paranoid, smart, frightening, and faithful family man. Why shouldn't a gorgeous movie about the last days of his life be just as maddening...
The film is made for Blu-ray and should be appreciated on the format if you can. It's worth it.
Great Actors. Boring Movie! This movie was so boring!! The actors in this movie do the best with what they have. It took me 3 tries before i actually got to sit down and watch the entire movie. Mostly, because i kept getting bored and cutting it off. Brad Pitt carries this movie most of the way but it's entirely to slow paced. This is not a movie, this is actually a documentary pretending to be a movie. They should have made a documentary about the Life and Death of Jesse James. Brad Pitt could have even narrated. That's basically all this is anyway.
Terrible Brad what were you thinking? I don't know what is going on here but I think Brad got together a bunch of his buddies and made a movie with him in it so they could have a shot at making some money. This is a boring terribly acted movie. I wanted someone to assassinate me just to keep from having to watch this POS. I feel ripped off. I bought the BD because I was duped by brads previous performances and the encouragement of a western genre with Jesse James as the focus.....NOT! I feel so used. I can't take enough showers to get the smell off of me. Anybody want to buy a BD cheap?
A Haunting Masterpiece If you don't like this movie, then you are probably not a movie lover. However, if you are someone who appreciates all the composite details of a movie such as the richness of the dialog, the choice of cast, the cinematography and the musical score then this film will stay with you for some time.
The way this beautiful film moves along makes it a haunting masterpiece. It also reinforces that in our overload of entertainment options such brilliant objects can easily be lost in the mud since it only took in $4 million at the box office. Regardless, everyone involved in this shoot knows that they were part of a memorable and wonderful piece of art.
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