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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 2662
Released: February 5, 2008 |
| Our Price: $5.27 |
| Used Price: $1.72 |
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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:
The best Western in over ten years. 
2009-12-11 - I couldn't beleive some of the one star reviews. This movie is historic, well told, and brilliant. The movie moves slower than the fast food gen might like, but its smarter than all that too. The gun shots feel real. Not some thousand round action movie, but real.
My wife and I saw this movie together. My favorite movie is the Good the Bad the Ugly, and hers is Rebbeca. She is not into history at all, but she really got into it. So its not just me.
Look if you like a good movie i.e. Shawshank, Casablanca you will probably enjoy this movie. Im not saying its as good, but really its so underrated. My thought after reading the other reviews is that those people either suffer from low IQs or short attention spans. So if you do have ADD seriously this isn't for you. But if you like a good story this is a good movie to see, if you like history this is a great movie period.
What it needed was big,shiny robots. That turn into cars! AND VAMPIRES!! YEAH!
2009-12-08 - This movie makes me question my own taste because a lot of people are saying it's long, boring and not very interesting, and yet I thought I was mesmerized by it. I was thinking this was the most hypnotic movie I've seen in a long time. Every frame looked amazing. The angles, colors, shapes, lighting, all seem to be perfectly blended to make one beautiful image after another. The acting felt like it was flawless (across the board). The story, especially viewed from Robert Ford's perspective, seemed excellent. Stupid me, I wanted another half hour when it was over! I think I took too much from it. Go Joe!
One of the greatest films of all time
2009-11-11 - I avoided this film when it came out because I couldn't believe Casey Affleck was an actor to watch. Well, I am proud to be eating humble pie and admitting that he is a tremendous talent along with director Andrew Dominick, Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, Sam Shepherd, Allison Elliot, Garrett Dillahunt and the rest of the cast.
Many have complained that the film is slow and it is, but it's a beautiful meditative slow, where every frame is like a gorgeous photograph. And they are, since they were shot by Roger Deakins probably the best cinematographer alive. The music is haunting and evocative. The dialogue is poetic and of the era. Very rare for this day and age. Heck for any age. It's not a shoot'em up and anyone who needs that fix when they watch a film, well, stick with Tranformers. This is a film about real people in real life situations where the moral isn't about winning or getting the girl but the price of fame and the caprice of the public. I'd say the movie almost bears comparison to The Godfather with The King of Comedy mixed in. The sense of dread and loss the director and editors created was awesome. It's just powerful.
It was overshadowed by both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood when it came out in 2007. But I think it's the superior of the three. It's definitely one of the best films I've ever seen.
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.
