The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

By John • Jan 26th, 2008 • Category: 2 Stars, Drama, Western

This movie is too long. That’s my major problem with it. Even though the main story is about two people, Jesse James and Bob Ford, there are too many elements outside of those two in this movie.

Many members of the James’ gang have a lot of screen time, and although they might help showing us who Jesse James is, many of them were not necessary to this story.

This is already a slow paced movie, but making it longer than necessary was not a good idea. I understand that it’s based on a book, and maybe the filmmakers wanted to capture the feeling of the book, but in this case I don’t think it worked.

At the end I can see what the point of this story was, I actually liked that. Bob always admired Jesse, but in the end he was almost forced to kill him, and the general public’s reaction to that is even more tragic.

I really liked Casey Affleck’s performance, he managed to convey Bob’s innocence at the beginning, as well as his frustration at the end. He’s nominated to supporting actor, but I think this is more his story than Jesse James’s.

Brad Pitt is not bad, but he always does the same thing. All his roles are very similar to each other, or his performances are.

I liked the ending, but I didn’t think it justified the long journey to get there.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

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