THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Director: Andrew Dominik Stars: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Shepard, Paul Schneider, Garrett Dillahunt, Ted Levine, Michael Parks, Zooey Deschanel, Nick Cave
Reviewed by GREG KING
Australian director Andrew Dominik first burst onto the scene with his corrosive and powerful biopic Chopper, which explored the rise to infamy of one of Australia’s most colourful criminal characters, and turned Eric Bana into an international star. It’s taken many years for Dominik to make his second film, but it has finally arrived in the form of this epic, elegiac western. His sophomore effort also looks at another colourful criminal character. This time though his film deals with legendary outlaw Jesse James, whose life has been the subject of many feature films in the past.
As the title suggests, the film looks at the last year in the life of the celebrated outlaw, who had developed a Robin Hood like reputation. At 34, James (played here by a brooding Brad Pitt) has largely retired from his life of crime and has settled down to a life of anonymity with his wife and children. But he is still a little paranoid, and is systematically eliminating former gang members who may be tempted to claim the reward for his capture or death. Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) is a callow youth on the fringes of the James gang who has long been obsessed and fascinated by Jesse. But Jesse himself is very shrewd, and, recognising Ford’s unhinged and potentially dangerous nature, manipulates him into eventually taking his life, something that he himself is unable to do.
Based on the 1983 novel by Ron Hansen, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is a much more sombre and cerebral film than Chopper and offers an unsettling meditation on the nature of fame and celebrity. There is something creepy about the way Ford worships Jesse, and Affleck portrays Ford almost like a 19th century stalker. A protracted epilogue shows how Ford temporarily gained celebrity status for shooting James in the back, and the ultimate consequence of his actions.
Dominik has cast the film well, with Sam Shepard, Zooey Deschanel and Mary-Louise Parker fleshing out smaller roles. Sam Rockwell is wonderful as Robert’s older brother Charley, who first introduces Robert into the James gang. But it is the two central performances that grab the attention. Pitt (who also helped produce the film) portrays Jesse as a more complex and conflicted character than we are used to seeing in films about the legendary outlaw. But the real revelation here is Affleck, who has a hypnotic quality and delivers a career defining performance as Ford.
Although it lacks Chopper’s sheer raw power, this film is by turn poetic, profane, profound and violent. Veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins has gorgeously crafted the film and creates some startlingly evocative images. Every frame virtually drips with a sense of dread or menace. This is a revisionist western, more in the contemplative mood of a Terrence Malick film, or Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves or Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. However, its 160-minute running time and measured pace may prove too unwieldy for some in the audience.
***
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
The Assassination is a fine piece of filmmaking. It is a Western, but not in the Hollywood vein.
It is based on a novel by Ron Hansen, read by Andrew Dominik who was intrigued by it and, as an Australian and an outsider to the American West, was an interesting choice to adapt the novel and to direct the film. The film is quite epic in its length and narrating of the legend of Jesse James - without going back into the past but rather focusing on the last year of Jesse James’ life.
The film is unlikely to be a big commercial success. It is far too serious for many of the multiplex audiences, despite the presence of Brad Pitt as Jesse James. The film is also strong in its breakthrough performance for Casey Affleck as Bob Ford. Affleck was in the background of a number of films including the three Ocean’s films as well as Gus van Sant’s Jerry with Matt Damon. He was then to appear in his brother’s first film as director.
The film is on a large screen but rather dark in its presentation of life in the American West, especially in Missouri in the 1880s. The seasons are Autumnal and Wintery, the countryside is bare or under snow. The towns are rather bleak, especially the new houses in what were to become the suburbs of the cities of Missouri.
The film does present some action, opening with the last train robbery performed by the James brothers and their gang. By this time, after 15 years of activity since the end of the Civil War and their fighting for the south, most of the early partners in the robberies were in jail or dead. They now have a new group of men, especially the Ford brothers. Bob Ford, very young, tries to persuade them to take him on - and he finally becomes a companion for Jesse James.
The film shows the respectable life that Jesse James lived as Thomas Howard in the cities - although he and his wife and family were continually on the move. Something was happening to Jesse James, a mental condition - perhaps psychopathic in his early years, a depression setting in, an even more determined cruelty to destroy those whom he thought were betraying him as well as a seeming resignation, at least in this plot outline, that Bob Ford should kill him.
Brad Pitt gives a very fine performance showing the deterioration in the character and psyche of the outlaw. Casey Affleck leads a very strong supporting cast including Sam Rockwell as Charlie Ford, Mary Louise-Parker as Zee, Jesse James’ wife, a cameo by Sam Shepard as Frank James, Jeremy Renner as one of the gang.
While the film does supply a long look at the way that the James brothers did their robberies, the main part of the plot is Jesse tracking down the various members of the gang, suspicious of them, destroying those he thought were betraying him, finally confronting Bob Ford.
The film is interesting in its movie history of the James brothers, silent films and those of the 30s emerging at the end of the 30s with Tyrone Power as Jesse James and Henry Fonda as Frank James who also appeared in The Return Of Frank James. This was the period of presenting many of the outlaws including Robert Taylor as Billy the Kid. During the 1940s and 50s there were some small budget films focusing on these outlaws and their exploits including I Killed Jesse James. By the 1970s, there was a demythologising of the American West in such films as Doc and Dirty Little Billy, deconstructing the myths of Doc Holiday and Billy the Kid. But, by the end of the 70s, Walter Hill made an epic, The Long Riders, with the various sets of brothers in the outlaw gangs including the James brothers, the Fords, the Youngers.
In the 1990s and the years following there was some kind of glorifying of the outlaws again. This film takes audiences back to the demythologising.
With Andrew Dominik as director, there will be many theses written about the comparison between the psychotic criminal, Mark “Chopper” Reed, the subject of Dominik’s first feature film and award winning film for Eric Bana as Chopper and Brad Pitt’s performance as the psychotic killer, Jesse James.
Reviewed by MARCUS SINCLAIR
Long considered dead by the industry and lamented by aficionados the Western has, once again, made a return to the silver screen with THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. It stars Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, but it seems unlikely that this film, even with the Pitt's box office attraction, will resurrect the genre to its former status.
Supposedly sticking to the facts rather than the legendary nonsense that has accumulated over the years about Jesse, his brother Frank and the James-Younger Gang, due to the efforts of numerous dime-novelists and film-makers, director/writer Andrew Dominik, using the novel by Ron Hansen as his starting point, has fashioned a work that is very long, very slow and strictly art-house. It deals with the last period of Jesse's life when the Younger brothers are no longer around, his brother Frank away, and he is contemplating the forming of a new gang to continue the robbing of banks and trains.
Basically this film is a psychological study of minds, one gradually disintegrating (Jesse's), and the other of a young hero-worshipping misfit (Ford), There is much slow, repetitive talk, similar to what would be found in a pretentious stage production, and there is very little action. The characters/players never really seem to establish a deep rapport between each other, and one is left with the impression that they are just going through the motions. Even those intimate scenes where Jesse greets his children and his wife, and Ford is with his "wife-to-be" and most of his acquaintances are flat. Also, as the movie developed, I never became involved with either of them. I was reminded of the central character in Albert Camus' existential novel The Stranger. With Jesse there is no grand passion, no zest for life, no excitement what-so-ever. (Perhaps, he knows deep down that he is past it? And this could be the reason that has puzzled historians for years as to why he removed his revolvers before rearranging the picture on the wall when he had someone in his house who he neither liked nor trusted?) He is just too cold, too remote to be believable.
Photographed for the most part to look like old period snap-shots the film has an air of authenticity about it. The sets, with much attention given to detail, and the selection of locations all aid in making it as atmospheric as possible. But the contrived artiness of shot after shot taken through imperfect window panes; of the sides of the frame out of focus to draw attention to the "action" at the centre of the shot; and those of a person standing in a doorway, mid screen, while the sides are blackened out, move the viewer away from the innovation, and the often startling beauty of it all to that of sheer boredom.