SummaryThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford delves into the private life and public exploits of America's most notorious outlaw. As the charismatic and unpredictable Jesse James plans his next great robbery, he wages war on his enemies, who are trying to collect the reward money--and the glory--riding on his capture. But t...
SummaryThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford delves into the private life and public exploits of America's most notorious outlaw. As the charismatic and unpredictable Jesse James plans his next great robbery, he wages war on his enemies, who are trying to collect the reward money--and the glory--riding on his capture. But t...
One of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise. It's a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood's oldest and most durable genre.
This was the best movie of 2007 and in my top 10 of history. This movie will inspire you to learn about cinematography. Roger Deakins has photographed some of the most beautiful movies ever, including most of the Coen Brothers (Fargo and No Country for Old Men most notably), this is his pinnacle. He finally won an Oscar for BladeRunner 2049. Andrew Dominick had only directed 1 other movie (Chopper in 2001), and never reached this quality again. Brad Pitt said this was his favorite performance, and of a career of brilliant acting this is definitely the pinnacle. Casey Affleck also was brilliant, really everyone was. Nick Cave provided a score that is a miracle. To me this is probably the second most well made movie I have ever seen, after Lawrence of Arabia. Deakins said the director had collected lots of still photos to correlate each scene, a good note for any prospective movie makers.
Mournful and moody, crepuscular and poetic, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford turns one of cinema's most rehearsed tales into a dreamy inquiry into the nature of sadism, hero-worship and betrayal.
I can tell you in nine words whether you'll want to see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Writer-director Andrew Dominik wants to be Terrence Malick.
Although not as radically defamiliarizing as Jim Jarmusch's avant-western "Dead Man," Jesse James has the feel of an attic ransacked for abandoned knickknacks.
The mere phrase "Brad Pitt as Jesse James" makes for a kind of mini-reflection on the evolution of celebrity culture. It's a shame that The Assassination of Jesse James never goes much deeper than that tag line.
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.
A grounded deconstruction of the classic western genre, the film shows the humanity behind some of frontier folklore's most infamous legends, and the final moments of the film and spine-tingling score will stay with you long after the credits roll.
For a synopsis of the film, see the title, an essay in itself. The film is similarly lengthy, unfolding leisurely over two hours and forty minutes. While nominally a Western, TAOJJBTCRF quiets down after the only gunfight, less than 45 minutes in. That’s just as well, because what’s on the screen is a character-driven drama about hero worship as self-realization—and that’s self-realization of the destructive kind. Character is well portrayed, dialog realistically written and well played, and the extra-wide 2.35:1 aspect ratio constantly brings in the bleak natural environment as an additional role, one that is in a sense voiced by a narrator. Photography and editing are beautifully done, and the tinkly musical score works better than might have been expected. A decent film, if a bit mannered, worth a second look. DVD has no special features about the film itself, Blu-Ray notwithstanding.
Good, Bad or Ugly: A Legend Shrouded in Gunsmoke Remains Hazy.
Before a bullet **** his skull in 1882, Jesse James cut a bloody swath through parts of the Midwest and the South, leaving a trail of corpses and favorable press notices in his wake. Bad man, poor man, bushwhacker, thief, James was as American as apple pie and the Confederate flag he wrapped himself in like an excuse. That bard of the great unwashed, Woody Guthrie, compared him to Robin Hood, and decades later Bruce Springsteen kept the fires burning, singing about a homespun legend as seductive as it is false.
The lachrymose new film “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” adds another gauzy chapter to the overtaxed James myth, if not much rhyme or reason, heart or soul. Topped by Brad Pitt wearing boot-black hair and a faraway stare, this is a portrait of the murderer as a middle-aged man as seen through the curious mirror of celebrity. At a well-seasoned 34, James lives in an ordinary house in an ordinary town, where he sits in his backyard smoking cigars and handling snakes, a devil playing at preacher. His days with Confederacy guerrillas are long gone, as are most of his crimes. Among his closest companions now is his greatest fan, Bob Ford, a gunslinger slyly played by Casey Affleck.
As its title announces, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is about a murder, the last violent chapter in a cruelly violent life. As such, it’s also about a celebrity stalker, a kind of Mark David Chapman in spurs who nurses an annihilating love for the object of his obsession. It’s an obsession fueled and fanned by the media, including the sympathetic newsmen who saw James as a heroic anti-Reconstructionist, and the fiction writers who memorialized and even exalted the brutal exploits of his gang. Like a schoolgirl with a crush, Bob Ford keeps his treasured Jesse James dime novels in a box under his bed. When he caresses the cover of one book, it’s as if he were tenderly stroking a lover’s cheek.
If there was more to Bob’s love, you won’t find it here, despite a coy bathtub scene that finds James luxuriating in milky water while the younger man hovers uncertainly nearby. “You want to be like me or do you want to be me?” asks James, casting his glance back at the man others would later brand Judas. In this nearly all-male world of camaraderie and gunsmoke, where little women bustle discreetly in the background (including Mary-Louise Parker as James’s wife, Zee), the ways of the flesh, of heaving, stinking, struggling humanity, have little place. For all their exploded bone and ravaged pulp, their trickles and rivulets of blood, the men in this film aren’t as much bodies as beautiful, empty signifiers.
In his last — and first — feature film, “Chopper” (2000), the New Zealand-born director Andrew Dominik seemed on the same wavelength as his raucous, at times queasy, entertaining subject, the ultrabrutal criminal reprobate of the title, played by Eric Bana. Neither overtly sympathetic nor disapproving, the filmmaker presented his villain as a larger-than-life but unequivocally human grotesque. Using color like an Expressionist, he bleached the screen a sizzling white that turned blood red nearly black and splashed on hues of bilious green and urine yellow as if to suggest that Chopper’s fluids had leaked from his body to contaminate his surroundings. The colors sicken and beguile, as does the human riddle at their center.
There’s a different riddle in “The Assassination of Jesse James,” staring into a florid sunset, slashes of red cutting across the sky. Dressed in near-all black, the question mark known as Jesse James stands away from the camera, knee-deep in a golden, grassy field stirred by the wind or perhaps just an off-screen mechanical fan.
It’s a striking, pleasing image, whatever the case, pretty as a picture postcard, a vision of man and nature that brings to mind Thoreau at Walden Pond or more precisely Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven.” James is also facing West, of course, toward the last frontier, home to cowboys and Indians and prospectors of all types, including, soon enough, those who will wield movie cameras, not six-shooters.
The true story of Jesse James, despite all the dime novels and B movies, remains untold, perhaps because in its savagery it really is as American as apple pie and, as such, unspeakably hard to tell.
his pretensions of courage and ruthlessness..
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
There are few high pitched dramatic sequences; especially the dinner table conversation, that easily allows you to cringe yourself on the seat for its hollow brutality and sheer horror depiction by the actors needs no definition on terms of craft and performance. The screen writer and director, Andrew Dominik is in his A game where he bring out his big guns sooner than expected and hits hard and fast which later turns out to be a bad influence in it. Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt; on parallel roles, are giving competition to each other and are supported with a great cast like Jeremy Renner and Sam Rockwell. The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is a character driven feature that feeds on emotional impact on character development but unfortunately chews it off way too much to be intriguing enough to invest in it.
I cant say how bad is this. I really cant but I will try, even if is painful to remember. Lets see, It does not make you cry or bring tears at least (its not a drama film), it has very few bullets or kills or chases (is not an action film), it will not scare you (is not a terror film), it does not have a mystery or plot twist (is not a suspense film), it absolutely will not make you laugh (is not a comedy film), It does not help you at all (it is not a self-help film), it has not biographical accuracy or plot (is not a bio film). To be short, IT IS NOT A FILM AT ALL. But if it would be a film, it would be the worst film ever.