Review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Jesse James is often remembered as a rowdy, wild, charismatic, and unpredictable hero, fighting against the stuffy, haughty lawmen and railroad executives who would have otherwise bitterly stifled his fun. Brad Pitt, who has, for almost two decades, played characters with a similar reckless good nature (Thelma & Louise, A River Runs Through It, Fight Club, Snatch, Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, etc., etc.), seemed an apt choice to portray the fabled outlaw. However, Brad Pitt's Jesse James isn't so much of a rambunctious rebel as a paranoid manic-depressive who falls between fits of boundless, savage anger and stretches of hopeless, vapid resignation.

While Jesse chases down the potentially menacing ghosts of his past, the movie centers on other characters from his now-defunct gang. Director Andrew Dominik builds each of these historic ruffians into intensely humanized men who, as Jesse's distrust grows, evoke sympathy at the fear of their former gang leader. Tense interplays between the volatile James and the friends he fears may turn him in for reward money pepper the film along with abrupt gunshots that emerge from masterfully suspenseful editing.

Strangely, one of the men Jesse chooses to trust, albeit in an agitated and fickle way, is Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), who grew up daydreaming of the James Gang's adventures. Bob's delusioned glances, obsessive mannerisms, and encyclopedic knowledge of James is disturbing even to Jesse, but the two repeatedly cross paths and Jesse agrees to take him on as a sidekick in an alleged train-robbing scheme.

Casey Affleck's portrayal of Robert Ford is flawless, enacting perfectly Ford's awkwardly articulated boyish hopes and thinly-veiled rages, as well as his later, more well-adjusted personage that becomes an almost tragic figure. Alongside Affleck is Sam Rockwell, who plays Bob's older brother, Charley. Rockwell is solid through his character's layered emotions of fear and convincingly-feigned dumb good humor.

The real roots of this movie lie not in a fantastic reshaping of Jesse James' adventures, but in a more realistic image of the people who knew, in the last years of his life, a man who was feared even by his friends. Amid a wilderness both arrestingly beautiful and intensely terrifying, Jesse goes on seemingly fated journeys and eventually loses the ability to differentiate between legitimate suspicion and indelible paranoia. To those around him he is god-like: enigmatic, unpredictable, wrathful, distant. But to Bob Ford, who once worshipped him as a legend, he becomes "just a man."

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a refreshing change from other, often shabbily-executed, films about outlaw heroes. There are no myths built around Jesse or the desperate and deluded Bob Ford. There are no cheap shoot-outs, no glorification of the rustic lives of train robbers. And for Bob Ford, there are no childhood misconceptions, even in the wake of James' murder, about greatness or fame, or trust, or heroes.

Jesse James is peacefully paced, sometimes alarming, and always engaging. Headed by an impressive cast and artful director, this film is both crisp and classic.