Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Westerns
Rating: R
Release Date: 5-FEB-2008
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #984 in DVD
• Brand: PITT,BRAD
• Released on: 2008-02-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 160 minutes

Amazon.com
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

Customer Reviews

Probably The Most Underappreciated Movie Of The Decade
I can't say enough about this near-perfect motion picture. If it is guilty of moving a little slowly in some parts, and (the inevitable critical refrain when shooting a historical picture) taking liberties with supposed fact, then it more than makes up for that in so many other ways. I can only say I hope this team of actors, directors, producers and writers gets together again soon to make another film. This is history, filmmaking, biography, storytelling, and the presentation of the legends of Americana as they all ought to be, and shame on the Academy for slighting this movie at the (increasingly out of touch) Oscars. As along with its pitch-perfect narration and soundtrack it alternates from its slightly fuzzy dreamy quality to its pull-no-punches brand of stark realism, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford weaves a hypnotic tale as has little else I've ever seen. If anyone thinks to dismiss either Brad Pitt or Casey Affleck as lightweight actors, watch this and learn otherwise. I'd put this on the ten best list of the 2000's thus far. Congratulations to everyone involved in this great classic.

While slow moving, this film is excellent.
This film caught me by surprise. The screenwriting is excellent, and Brad Pitt gives what may be his best performance ever as Jesse James in the sunset of his notorious career. The film is as much about morality as about a peculiar period in American history, a time of expansion westward which was conducted at great cost to many. I rather enjoyed the bleak yet realistically portrayed conditions of frontier town life and the typical period style shameless sideshow staged events that this movie profiles. While the title gives away the culminating event, by the end of the film, you find yourself sympathizing with the fabled outlaw, despite his horrific deeds. Mr. Pitt's performance is wonderful; his silences, body language and facial expressions are as well acted as his dialogue. However, be forewarned: if you like action movies, this isn't one of those. Quite the opposite: it is one of those slow as molasses unfolding story movies.

Western Art
Westerns are constantly being reinvented. Sometimes just adequately. But sometimes, as in the case of this film, they set the bar for a whole new level of enjoyment within the genre. And ironically, (much like a Sergio Leone film) it's being done by a Director who's not even American! You'd think that we Americans would know best how to make movies about our own history, as well as within a genre that all but defined early American cinema, but Dominik (Director of the Australian classic "Chopper") aced this one. He's captured the flavor and feel of the Reconstruction Era (as best we can understand it today).

The whole film is a Western-noir of epic proportions. A Greek Tragedy that slices open and lays bare the reality of notoriety, gained at the cost of crime...the notion of romanticizing the Old West has never been so thoroughly destroyed, as in this film. No one is a winner in this movie. And for my money, THAT is what makes it so great. That disconnect that you often feel with the times when watching other westerns isn't present in this film. The characters are so genuine, so real, and the attention to historic detail in every facet of the movie is so meticulous, that you get a sense of not being just a mere spectator, but of actually being a silent, awe-struck participant, standing just barely and always at arms length, wishing you could reach in and halt the tragedy that is unfolding in front of you.

The film's BEAUTIFUL cinematography and musical score also help to gel moments of extreme, gut-wrenching emotion...like the build-up to the scene where Jesse gets killed, for example, which is so poetically rendered. At the moment Jesse says; "Don't that picture look dusty?", the score comes in, and this point in time is set in a mournful, heart-stopping way. Bob & Charley (Affleck and Rockwell) are so limp with fear, love, shame, remorse, etc., it's almost beautifully unbearable to even watch. For anyone who knows their history and what's about to happen, you feel as if you'd give anything in the world to somehow turn back the clock at this critical juncture in our nation's past. To somehow right the apparent wrong.

Casey Affleck is AMAZING as a squirrelly, mincing villain...he's really the ultimate stalker! Yet, by the end of the film, you can so thoroughly feel his own pain over what he's done, that you don't know whether to embrace him, or loathe him. His character was not an easy one to portray. Bob Ford made the history books, but not in the dire way he so longed to be remembered. Ultimately, he realized that. But it was more than just too late to redeem himself. He would be immortalized forever in the less than flattering die which he alone had cast himself in.

It's a long film, as some people have complained about. But for American history buffs...and for pure film buffs who enjoy movies that are more art than prepackaged, predictable Hollywood westerns...this film will adorn your library, much the way an original Russel painting might hang with prominence over your fireplace. If you love the genre and you want to be transported back in time, then by all senses, the film actually seems to end too soon! ;-)