Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He?s the nation?s most notorious criminal hunted by the law in 10 states. He?s also the land?s greatest hero lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. Robert Ford? No one knows him. Not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. He?ll befriend Jesse ride with his gang. And if that doesn?t bring Ford fame he?ll find a deadlier way. Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession in this virile epic produced in part by Ridley Scott and featuring gripping portrayals by Brad Pitt (winner of the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award) as Jesse and Casey Affleck as the youth drawn closer to his goal?and farther from his own humanity.Running Time: 159 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/OUTLAWS UPC: 012569763739 Manufacturer No: 76373

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

Rating : - The Thin Dark Line
Just rented the DVD and watched this for the first time last night- missed seeing it in the theatres (which was released in Tulsa, OK, strangely only for a brief time, and then only at an "arts" film theatre).
I'm sure seeing it on a small screen detracts from the cinematography, which looks beautiful even on a TV screen.
Many other reviews on this site already aptly summarize the well-known story, and I agree the acting all around is first rate.
But at 140 minutes in length, I suspect that it will appeal mostly to students of the James gang history, and film-as-art officionados particularly- but perhaps not to most Western movie fans. The action in the movie is done well enough, perhaps even more realistically than most "shoot-em up" Westerns, but unfortunately these brief, violent moments are separated by long stretches of character-development. Don't get me wrong, I liked this film very much, but I'd have to say that you have to be in the mood, so to speak, to really appreciate this film. I'd liken it very much to Terrence Mallick's "The Thin Red Line", about the Guadalcanal struggle of 1942. History, yes, but only loosely so- more of an allegory, and a visual feast, than edge-of-your-seat action.
I suspect the intentional slow pace of this film will lose a considerable number of viewers, but for those who have 3 hours to spare, and are in a pensive mood, this is Western movie-making worth vieiwing. I plan to buy myself a DVD for my own, and I suspect that with repeated viewing, it will grow on me with time. It clearly has a lasting impact after one viewing. Recommended, but probably for a relatively contemplative audience.