Don’t that picture look dusty?

THE SUMMARY: Brad Pitt plays an outlaw legend of the American west, Casey Affleck plays an admirer who ultimately kills him, and dramatized American history has never looked better. For any minor complaints I have, the early train robbery scene is unforgettable.

FROM MOVIE-PICKER JAMES: A personal favorite of mine, and I think it could serve as a Matt-torture device due to its overly slow pacing and numerous unnecessary scenes. I'm a sucker for the atmosphere/music/presentation of this movie, but I could still see it getting the Blade Runner 1/5 Wicky treatment from Matt. Very interested to see what people think of this one if it makes the cut.

A+ for aesthetics

THE BEST:

Gorgeous scenes, lighting, and camera work: Normally I’m not as much of an aesthetics guy - all the cool visuals in the world don’t make up for crappy writing or crappy characters. And it’s not as though this movie has a bad story or bad characters anyway, but I was very impressed with the visual presentation, particularly the early scene of the Blue Cut train robbery. The boots on the shaking tracks, the train light breaking through the trees, Jesse standing on the tracks as the train screeches to a halt and the steam surrounds him - classic American west, and an oddly beautiful presentation of crime. The scene was so incredible it was re-created in Red Dead Redemption 2, one of my all-time favorite video games. I wasn’t aware of the homage when I played it, but I’m glad to know about it now.

The Albertan landscapes were also impressive surroundings. The movie was truly excellent visually.
(Reasonably and mostly) historically accurate: I’m sure I have a bias in this movie’s favor just because its setting and history interest me - I love the history of the American west - but this movie does a good job of building interesting characters and storylines while maintaining reasonable historical fidelity. The depiction of Jesse James’ killing is largely correct, as is the end for Robert Ford, as well as the events prior like the fight between Wood Hite and Dick Liddle that Robert Ford ended with a shot to Hite’s head. This movie is a good, entertaining, dramatic re-telling of a story of American historical significance, and one that largely mirrored the timeline of the era. The killing of Jesse James, with other generally concurrent events, marked the beginning of the end of the wild west. Once the law moved in, the days of train robbing and fighting Indians moved out.

THE WORST:

What the hell is James Carville doing here? I actually said that out loud when he appeared as Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden. I’ll never forget Carville as the Cajun Mr. Clean who would frequently appear on Meet the Press when I was young and still watched that show, but more importantly, he was Bill Clinton’s lead political strategist for his successful 1992 Presidential campaign.
Why was Carville cast for this role? He doesn’t even look like Thomas Crittenden, and it’s not like his compelling performance makes the non-resemblance worth it. At the time, even the film’s producers said Carville sucked. Director Andrew Dominik said after the movie’s release, ‘[Carville] came unprepared. He couldn’t get his lines out right. It’s like he has ADD. It took us three hours to shoot that one small scene.’ It was a baffling and weird decision to cast him here, but I guess maybe someone owed Hillary a favor and didn’t want to get Arkancided.
Deviations from history for no real purpose make a long movie: The movie is long and does drag. As much as I appreciate the general fidelity to history, there are some deviations, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they’re deviations that don’t serve much purpose and just make for a longer movie - specifically the sub-plot of Dick Liddel (lol) moving on Wood Hite’s young step-mother Sarah Hite. It was a drawn-out plot point to build the fatal fight between Hite and Liddel, which did happen in real history, but it was never about Hite’s step-mother. Instead their fight was over Martha Ford, Robert and Charley’s widowed sister. The revision wasn’t necessary to achieve the same plot point, and could have been done in much less time.
I did appreciate Hite’s death scene, however. The calm family goodbye to a man shot through the head and bleeding out was classic. ‘I’d get you something to drink, but I’m afraid you’d just choke on it!’ It was the old west, and everyone died of dysentery, but in many ways it was a healthier perspective on death than we have today.

THE RATING: 4/5 Wickies. Longer than it should be, but a memorable and beautiful telling of a classic American history story.

YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇

NEXT WEEK: Idiocracy (2006)

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Matt's Movie Reviews

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)