Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-03-31
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 155 minutes

Amazon.co.uk
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

DVD Description
Having idolised Jesse James all through his young life, Robert Ford desperately tries to join the outlaw's gang, only to soon find himself getting resentful towards his hero...

Synopsis
Based on the 1983 novel by Ron Hansen, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford depicts the final few months of the legendary Jesse James's life. He was 34, and his days of ruthless robbing had dwindled, yet his fearsome reputation continued to swell. With an abundance of nickel-books retelling his brutal gun-slinging adventures, James (portrayed by Brad Pitt) had become a symbolic hero for many Americans, and a dazzling tabloid icon for the 19th-century media. A particular young man seduced by the wonderment of James, the shifty Robert Ford (a breakthrough performance by Casey Affleck), wormed his way in as a James groupie, in the hopes of snagging a coveted spot alongside his brother Charley (played by Sam Rockwell) as one of the bandit's cronies. Ford, fiercely insecure and painfully aware that he would never be taken seriously by James (who, ever-plagued by paranoia and scepticism, found Ford's earnest obsession a bit unsettling), grew increasingly angry with his idol, leading to a destructive path that ultimately ended in the anticlimactic death of Jesse James--and brought the treacherous Robert Ford the notoriety he had always wanted.

Customer Reviews

Long But Worthwhile
This movie does go on for a rather long time.
However, the photography, acting and music are all of high quality and the time flies in. Casey Affleck captures the weasel-like, almost stalker, Bob Ford in a very convincing way.Brad Pitt has a more understated performance as Jesse James and plays him just like a regular guy most of the time though his menace seems to be bubbling just under the surface.
Sam Rockwell is also truly outstanding as Charlie Ford, what an outstanding and underrated actor he is.Utterly convincing on screen.
Some of the 'Old West' dialogue is cranky and a little hard to follow at times, though that is a small criticism.
Sure, it's not a masterpiece but very much worth the watching.
Recommended.

Fine revisionist Western (8/10)
'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' is a thoughtful and atmospheric film about the American outlaw myth. A careful and occasionally brutal revisionist western in the mould of Clint Eastwood's masterpiece 'Unforgiven [1992]', Andrew ('Chopper') Dominik's epic has been crafted with a painstaking, sometimes self-consciously meticulous eye. Like Eastwood's Oscar winner, 'The Assassination ...' aims to debunk some of the Western's myths, from the notional romantic hero of the train robber, to the casual violence that characterised the genre. The violence in this film is bloodily visceral, erupting from a deeply inhospitable landscape populated by dirty, sickly and paranoid men.

The edge of realism is offset by the striking and often impressionistic realising of the bleak American landscape. There are no triumphant gallops through Monument Valley, just pneumonia-inducing frozen hillsides. In a way, the director's great care in rendering his characters so emotionally and physically numb - enhanced by a liberal use of longeur - make it a pretty chilly film to watch. 'The Assassination of Jesse James' is an engaging work nonetheless, although the slightly verbose voiceover - probably culled directly from Ron Hansen's book of the same name - is clunky and portentious. Often describing things that can be easily deduced on screen, its po-faced superfluousness rather jars. Nevertheless, Brad Pitt's menacing take on Jesse James - akin to that of paranoid mob boss who rules with fear - sustains a creeping tension that fuels this slow-paced movie. His paranoia is portrayed as a kind of contagious infection that slowly kills off his gang following their final heist, insinuating itself between friends and brothers. Casey Affleck is particularly good as the effeminate and sycophantic Robert Ford, who has idolised the Jesse James myth since boyhood and latches himself onto the James gang like a besotted groupie. However, Jesse grooms his admirer into his own assassin, forseeing and securing his own mythical status in the process.

One other minor quibble I have in a film that is otherwise so stylistically careful, is the lazy use of sped-up cloud formations - a cinematic technique so cliched now it should only be used in parody. Otherwise there is much to admire about 'The Assassination of Jesse James' even if it's difficult to invest emotionally in such a bleak assessment of human nature. The film's mood sits readily next to Paul Thomas Anderson's operatic 'There Will Be Blood (2 disc Special Edition) [2007]': both films suggesting that the myths at the heart of the American dream - its outlaw heros, its oil prospectors, for example - are soaked in blood and barbarism.

Boring and pretentious
I'm sorry this film is dire - in so many ways I can't be bothered to mention them all - if you want to watch a good western watch Unforgiven - it beats this dull, pretentious snoozefest hands down.