Review - The Assassination of Jesse James

[Tati]

Geoff Pevere
Movie Critic

3 1/2 stars out of 4

When this movie makes good on its title, and the lost-to-legend Missouri bank robber, media sensation and icon-to-be Jesse James (played by a decidedly haggard-looking Brad Pitt) is blown into folklore immortality by Casey Affleck's Bob Ford, the murder feels like something foreordained.

Like the stabbing of Julius Caesar, the crash of James Dean and – inevitably – the betrayal of Jesus, it's got ritual written all over it.

The most ritualistic of movie narrative forms, the western has always had its own death hard-wired into its soul.

No popular movie genre is more nostalgic or melancholic by nature, and none is more fixated on the transcendent necessity of dying: legends are born when the flesh expires.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the second film (after 2000's Chopper) written and directed by the 40-year-old New Zealander Andrew Dominik, is like an extended death ballad, an account of the final days of Jesse James that manages to breathe vitality into the western movie as a popular art form at the same time that it so magisterially administers the last rites.

Based on the superb 1983 novel by Ron Hansen, The Assassination of Jesse James begins with the arrival of the sadly starstruck 19-year-old Bob Ford (a fetchingly creepy and sad performance by Affleck) at the James gang's forest hideout on the eve of what will be the already famed outfit's final train robbery.

Coldly rebuffed by Jesse's taciturn older brother Frank (Sam Shepard), and subsequently patronized by the distracted and self-possessed Jesse, Ford assumes the role that will become his mythic destiny: as the man who will ultimately betray the object of his wounded obsession, and who will be forced to live out his remaining days as one of history's most despised and trod-upon footnotes.

As Bob slowly moves toward his own uncomfortable date with destiny, Affleck's performance moves through a multitude of shades of pale: at first a needy wannabe desperado looking badly in need of a bar of soap, Bob becomes increasingly sensitive to his status as the gang's geek pariah and resident joke.

The most painful moment comes when a box full of Jesse James dime novels are found under the starstruck Bob's bed.

Eventually consumed by jealousy and resentment, Bob in the last act adopts a kind of deathbed serenity – like Jesse, he's fully aware of how the script of his life must play out.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. After Frank departs for the east (where he will live long enough to live out the contradictions of his own legend), Jesse is left with both the scruffy remains of his gang – including Bob's brother Charley (Sam Rockwell), his cousin Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner), the bloomer-chasing Dick Liddel (Paul Schneider) and not overly intellectual Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) – and the demons of his own unsettled psyche.

While Affleck's cipher-like Bob provides the movie's romantically distorted, quietly tormented point-of-view, Pitt is magnetic as Jesse: an intelligent but paranoid man driven into hiding by his own reputation and worn into early decline by the certainty of his own death.

He never sleeps, wears his gunbelts constantly, and is prone to mood swings that can be terrifying in their intensity.

Pitt's Jesse James is a man imprisoned within his own celebrity – at one point, we're told Jesse is the only American Europeans know besides Mark Twain – driven virtually insane by what he has become and tortured by the peace he'll never have.

Overlaid with a quietly ironic narration that suggests – along with the haunting isolation of figures in Alberta's vast natural spaces – the influence of Badlands' Terrence Malick, and shot by the estimable Roger Deakins in a manner that frequently gives the edges of the frame a prismatic quality, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is itself a movie that plays out somewhere between the realm of self-conscious myth and grimy human tragedy.

It's a western destined to outlive the pronouncements of its own death, because it knows that death is only the first stage in the life of legend.

Toronto Star, TheStar.com

I must admit I'm intrigued. I've always enjoyed Brad as an actor (ducks), and it sounds like this actually lives up to the hype.

[HWBL]

BAD PITT | By LOU LUMENICK | New Movies | Upcoming Movies | Ratings

BAD PITT

MOVIES LIKE THIS
- LONG, DULL, AFFECTED -
SHOULD BE OUTLAWED

September 21, 2007 -- AS pretentious and lengthy as its title,
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
is a gorgeous snooze, somewhere between imitation Terrence
Malick and a feature version of star Brad Pitt's notorious Vanity
Fair layout with Angelina Jolie and their faux kids.

Pitt is the latest in a long line of pretty actors - everyone from
Tyrone Power to, most recently, Colin Farrell in "American Outlaws"
- to play the legendary robber, here seen alternately as a psychotic
killer and weary, bullet-scarred family man approaching both middle
age and the end of his life.

As the film opens in 1881, most of Jesse's original band are long
dead, and his brother Frank (played briefly by Sam Shepard) retires
after one last train robbery (which is about as exciting as this
movie gets).

As Frank was much smarter than Jesse, the latter spends his
final months hiding under an assumed identity and planning jobs
that were never executed.

He spends more time worrying that members of his ragtag
entourage will turn him in to collect a bounty offered by the
governor of Missouri (a scene-stealing cameo by James Carville).

Rubbing out several of his confederates, Jesse gives insufficient
thought to the sycophantic Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), a stuttering
19-year-old fan of dime novels about Jesse's exploits who has
entered the gang on the coattails of his morose older brother
Charley (Sam Rockwell).

Amid more pregnant pauses than a season's worth of Pinter and
visuals practically plagiarized from Robert Altman's "McCabe and
Mrs. Miller," Aussie director Andrew Dominik ("Chopper") offers a
variety of explanations for the titular act, which finally occurs
132 long minutes into the movie.

Besides the reward, self-preservation and jealousy of Jesse's
celebrity, the flick rather heavy-handedly suggests Bob Ford had
unresolved homoerotic issues.

This is most hilariously spelled out in a scene where Bob tries to
engage a distracted Jesse, who's taking a bath, in a conversation
about their being the "same size."

This artsy adaptation of Ron Hansen's 1982 book, which further
obscures things with hard-to-follow accents, doesn't pick up even
a little momentum until after Bob shoots Jesse in the back.

The final half-hour is essentially a lengthy coda devoted to Bob's
life afterward, which began with 15 minutes of fame as he and his
brother re-enacted the assassination in a traveling stage show.

Charley takes his own life, while Bob endures a famous ballad about
"that dirty little coward" (performed on-screen by Nick Cave) before
being shot to death by another fame-seeker.

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" has
been on the shelf for a year, with Warner Bros. reportedly testing
as many as half a dozen different cuts to indifferent audience response.

Even Pitt's head-scratching best actor award at the Venice Film
Festival (he basically plays Jesse as an attitudinized version of
himself in a fashion layout) isn't going to help much.

The events here were far more entertainingly covered by Sam
Fuller in his directing debut, "I Shot Jesse James," recently released
on DVD - and it's half as long, to boot.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

* 1/2

They shoulda shot the director instead.

[sweetrebel]

I like him, too, Tati. I can't wait to see it...