Directed by Andrew Dominik
Starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck
Brad Pitt, international superstar, steps into the spurs of Jesse James, the notorious outlaw who once rivaled Mark Twain for title of World’s Most Famous American. Jesse James was the stuff of tall-tales, his gang’s goings-on grist for the myth mill. But don’t expect any showdowns, shootouts, or cops & robber chases from this revisionist Western. Adapted from Catholic novelist Ron Hansen’s book of the same name, Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a snail-paced psychological drama—heavy on the psychology, light on the drama.
The elements are all in place for a good, possibly great, movie: spare, poetic dialogue delivered by well-cast actors (always nice to see Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, and the especially excellent Garret Dillahunt); lyrical, atmospheric cinematography by Oscar-nominated Roger Deakins; evocative soundtrack by
So why do the elements not combine to make a great movie? There’s probably a long way of answering that question and a short way. Unlike the movie, I’ll opt for the shorter route. At two hours and forty minutes, Assassination is as slow as molasses in January. Though meditatively paced, it’s never clear what exactly the filmmakers are meditating on.
Andrew Dominik, directing only his second film, never settles on a consistent tone. He relies on voice-over narration lifted whole cloth from Hansen’s book—a concession, in a way, to the fact that he never solves the problem of how to make his characters’ interior struggles visually dramatic. The narrator informs us what the characters are thinking as we watch them stare pensively out a window or across a windswept plain.
If anything, the movie aims to complicate its own apparently straightforward title. The “Coward Robert Ford,†like Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s assassin) killed his object of worship. Though biblical parallels to Judas might spring to mind (James is even buried on Good Friday), Jesse James is no JC. Bob Ford’s fixation is more reminiscent of Tom Ripley’s homoerotic obsession with wealthy dilettante Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley; both characters seem unfinished, socially inept, and incomplete without someone to look up to. Jesse James tells Ford, “I don’t know if you want to be like me, or if you want to be me.â€
Pitt is an interesting choice for the part of Jesse James. Casting a world-famous celebrity—who so many people want to be like or to just be—as the kind of outlaw who 
inspired Robert Ford’s dangerously unstable brand of hero-worship, is a clever bit of meta-commentary. But the idea is more effective in the abstract than in the execution. Pitt lacks the intensity that makes you believe Jesse James murdered seventeen people. The movie as a whole would have benefited from the fierceness and unpredictability of an actor like Daniel Craig, whose piercing blue eyes can seem challenging, ruthless, and devoid of pity, including self-pity.
Pitt does creditable work, and I can’t fault him for tackling challenging, un-Hollywood material. He plays James as careworn, weary; perhaps tired of living up to his own outsized reputation. Either that or he’s coasting. It’s difficult to tell. The characters that satellite James are supposed to be terrified of him, living in constant fear of his wrath or his suspicion or his vengeance. Pitt does not seem dangerous. He carries himself with the same stoner lassitude that has characterized his performances of late. It is by no means a bad performance, just a predictable one, where another actor might have tapped a deeper vein of anger, cruelty, and pathos.
The movie merited its two Oscar nominations: Roger Deakins for his atmospheric cinematography and Casey Affleck for his portrayal of Bob Ford, the sycophant from hell. Affleck, unlike Pitt, is able to manifest his character’s pained, insecure interior life through a performance eloquent with nervous mannerisms, unconvincing affectations, empty smiles, and crippling social awkwardness. Ford’s story is a sad one, worth telling, and no doubt when Hansen came across it in the history books he felt that he couldn’t improve on the truth. Perhaps Dominik felt like he couldn’t improve on his source material—you can just about read the book in the same amount of time it takes to watch the movie.
USCCB Rating: A-III — Adults
This film contains a nauseating scene in which Jesse James beats up and humiliates Bob Fored and it is this which blights an otherwise pschologically interesting film. Why do film-makers have to include this kind of stuff?
Left by Peter Ives on April 6th, 2008