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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 4081
Released: February 5, 2008 |
| Our Price: $4.50 |
| Used Price: $1.09 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He’s the nation’s most notorious criminal, hunted by the law in 10 states. He’s also the land’s greatest hero, lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. Robert Ford? No one knows him. Not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. He’ll befriend Jesse, ride with his gang. And if that doesn’t bring Ford fame, he’ll find a deadlier way. Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession in this virile epic produced in part by Ridley Scott and featuring gripping portrayals by Brad Pitt (winner of the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award) as Jesse and Casey Affleck as the youth drawn closer to his goal…and farther from his own humanity.
Description of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford:
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 backshooting 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 (2000), 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 mesmerizing 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 wellnigh-novelistic backstory 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 costar 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
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Reviews:
Pace - Is it a Friend or Foe? 
2009-11-07 - Ford - a name associated with the last days of Jesse James and the stuff of many a hateful ballad. Why? Because Ford was once hailed as a hero when he pushed a bullet into the skull of Jesse James, only to be later labelled a coward because of many an aspect. First there was the way that Jesse died - a bullet to the back of the head - and the way the media sought to portray the outlaw. Much like many of the people in his day, the outlaw had become bigger than life and, though a killer amongst other things, he was - as the film points out - looked at with the same wonder that one would show the wonders of the world. Second, Jesse still had a following in the states that felt that they should have fought on in the Civil War. Added to that was the fact that Pinkertons raided the family farmhouse and cost his mother an arm, that he was constantly hounded and the price seemed to go skyward as he slipped noose after noose, and that he had a proclivity for killing "old friends" that he saw as threats and you had a legend. When this legend died at the hands of robert Ford, a seeming piece of backdrop on Jesse Jame's stage, and you had yourself a tale rife with villiany. Never ind the deeds of his past - he was an icon. so much so, in fact, that Ford's killer was - as the movie again pointed out - pardoned for the crime after serving only a dose of his lifelong sentence.
It seemed like someone like Robert Ford was not good enough to kill someone like Jesse in the eyes of the public.
The movie picks up in the brittle places where Jesse and death are closing in on one another, and it seems as though Jesse knows what is coming. It takes us through the struggles that Jesse has in maintaining the mask of sanity that barely fit him to begin with, showing us the actions of a person who almost seemed to have a deathwish. It also throws in the players in this dance that sets around the man, with Jesse finding himself listening to rumors and fearing even those closest to him. enter the deaths of many of the people he rode with, and the two Fords that would ultimately bring about his demise.
What i liked about this movie was the fact that Robert ford was not ignored in this movie (although the portrayal of Jesse was hard to stop watching), and that he wasn't classified as a simpleton or some sort of screw-up. He was simply a person doing what he thought was right, and that was emulating the person he looked up to most in the world. The problem was that this person, Jesse, wronged him in ways both subtle and in crowds, and he and Charlie Ford began noticing what was happening all around them. Robert wanted to be as big as Jesse, but he also wanted to live long enough to see past his 21st birthday. On that death day, the things played out in a way that made me wonder if Jesse didn't want to have a gunfight in a house filled with his family, or if he was just tired and he kind of liked the kid that he picked on. Granted, this was a movie and answers seldom come from movies, but this thing was something I liked when I watched it.
If you are loking for gunfighting and a lot of action, then look for another Jesse James movie. This is the last days of Jesse and is focused on Robert Ford, not the James Gang. This means that you have a lot of thought and wonderment, a lot of disappointment and fear, and a lot of disillusionment when the world didn't applaud his last move. It is a great piece historically speaking, however, even if there are errors here and there. I personally think that it is watchable for crowds of people that know what they are in for - a character-piece that is slowly driven and that gives you a lot of each person in the film. It was different, too, and the artistic way it danced made me like it AFTEr i saw it more than once.
Recommended - but with a cautionary motion to say that the film is either great or boring for its viewer.
Western Noir 
2009-11-04 - Well acted, thoughtfully directed noirish western. Brad Pitt turns in yet another acting masterclass as the titular hero while Casey Affleck gives a convincing though at times undynamic performance as weakness personified Tom Ford, a man cut from a very different cloth to the strong, windswept Jesse James. Despite its occasionally sluggish tempo, this is a taut psychological thriller that retains a grip-like vice until the end. It's also a poignant statement about the quest for celebritydom. Watch out for a cameo by Nick Cave as a bar-room entertainer. Full marks for Mary-Louise Parker's supporting performance as Jesse James's wife. Sam Rockwell, as Tom Ford's more morally solvent brother Charlie, does a less manic version of cowboy persona we remember from Green Mile.
Some people may question history's romantification of Jesse James - a man who by all accounts was a total nightmare.
Most Disappointing 
2009-09-27 - This has got to be the most boring Jesse James movie ever made. Even with the likes of Brad Pitt and Sam Shephard, it just doesn't cut it. Pitt is brilliant as "bad guy" Jesse James, but his amazing performance is not enough to make this movie worth watching. Shephard is conspicuously absent from most of the movie, which moves so slowly I had to watch in three sittings. I confess I would have scrapped it entirely after the first attempt if I hadn't recently canceled my satellite tv service. If you pay $18 for this movie, you will most likely be disappointed, too.
Watched Over 20 Times!!
2009-09-18 - My boyfriend and i have watched this movie over 20 times and it still never gets dull. It is a wonderful portral of Jesse James life. I'm distanly related to this man, i know everyone gasp i'm related to someone who has done some terrible things in history. But I think that this movie really showed how he cared for his family and friends and i think it did him justice. I think that Brad Pitt was the perfect person for this roll and would say the same for Casey Affleck for Robert Ford. Can't get enough of this movie. Perfect for history buffs and jesse james fans alike.
Film Redeemed By a Terrific Second Half
2009-08-09 - At times watching this film seems like a chore for, say, the first hour and a half. Stay with it because it rebounds nicely in the end. The film goes at a deliberate pace. Some would say it drags. By the film's midpoint it's themes of good and evil, truth and fiction, real and unreal start to cohere. Brad Pitt is terrific in conveying the multi-facets that was Jesse James. He terrificly encapsulates a man who could be a loving husband and father and also a cold-blooded killer. The revelation here is Casey Affleck as Robert Ford. In a complex reading of the character we are left to wonder whether Ford was a hero-worshiper, cold-blooded killer, or an avenging angel. Affleck plays his cards close to the vest so his motives remain an enigma. It makes for a little irony in the film's title. I recommend this film despite the slow going at times.
