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The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford [Blu-ray] [2007]
from Warner Home Video
starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Mary Louise Parker
directed by Andrew Dominik

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Molly Parker, Sam Shepard

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 back-shooting 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, 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 mesmerising 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 well nigh-novelistic back-story 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 co-star 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

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0

• The Most Beautiful Film Ever Made
  I've been thinking of a good way to start my review, I've been pondering many opening sentences, but none of them are close enough to the point, so I've decided to just say that this film is perfect in all aspects. When the credits started to roll I didn't move at all, I sat staring at the screen just thinking about what I just watched. I was trying to understand if what I just saw was really that good, or if I was just thinking it was. The film runs at almost three hours, but never looses your attention... more info

• The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
  Ok so I just recently watched this movie for the second time and felt compelled to write about it.
  I enjoyed this movie a huge amount, certainly one of my favourite films of recent years. The story follows the last few months of the notorious outlaw Jesse James life. Obviously the title of the film and notariaty of the main character leaves the ending of the film clear for all to see. It's fascinating to watch the steps that lead up to his murder, and to get what feels like a very realistic look into... more info

• A Modern Classic
  Superb film.For me this is up there with The Unforgiven as the best modern western.Criminaly overlooked at the oscars.

• Country for young men
  With this, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood, we've recently been given a formidable apocalyptic Western triumvirate - you wait fifteen years (Unforgiven was released in 1992) and suddenly three bleak classics come along at once!
  Watching Andrew "Chopper" Dominik's second feature, you'll quickly realise it has as much to say about modern Western society as it has about its 1880's setting. Here are people - REAL people - who are so obsessed by the elusive nature of celebrity that they risk... more info

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