Reviews

Reading some of the reviews here I wonder what movie the reviewers saw. I had no high expectations, although I like Jon Favreau's work and both Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford have pleased me before. Oh, and I love Westerns and like Sci-Fi.

While in retrospect -- and after reading some of the reviews -- I can see plot holes that didn't appear during the movie -- there were things that didn't entirely make sense I had no problem staying with the flow and as things were revealed understood what was happening. But I was in the moment from the first shot of Craig, waking up in the desert -- often sited as Arizona but actually New Mexico -- through his encounter with the scalp-hunters,his rather distracted manner -- he doesn't know who he is or where he came from, which would probably distract any of us -- and all the way through to the end.

Favreau obviously gets westerns and quotes brief snippets from several, including "The Searchers." The costuming was good enough that it didn't take me out of the moment and the guns were period correct, which often can ruin a movie for me. Ella (Olivia Wilde) wasn't corseted, but she turns out to be an alien who has taken human form, so she can be excused.

The aliens were mindless battle-beasts and I suspect that there might have been a higher intelligence somewhere on that ship. They were a bit derivative of earlier movie aliens, but just different enough to serve the purpose.

I liked the journey of discovery Lonergan (Craig) takes, learning bits of his history as he goes along. Dolarhyde (Ford), too, has some redemptive moments, and both of them at the end, in typical western fashion, are different men that when they started.

I enjoyed my afternoon. My wife enjoyed her afternoon. And, we both liked seeing the familiar New Mexico sky and mountains and the ever-present dust. The look of the film -- night scenes were dark, muddy and believable and you saw anything you needed to see -- was excellent. People looked as if they actually populated a desert town in the Southwest.

So I don't know what the nay-sayers were watching. It didn't sound like the film we watched.

Ana, my wife, hit the nail on the head as we discussed this film on the way home. Speaking of the length and the pacing of the film she said, "Of course it was long and built slowly. It was a dirge, a stately funeral march toward the inevitable ending." Dead on, dear. Ana is not a fan of westerns, for the most part. She's been dragged into the whole western thing by me, who has loved them from his childhood. I especially like ones that have the aura of authenticity, costuming, sets, weapons, the look of the people and so on. This movie has that all.

It also has fine portrayals of the main characters -- the two outlaws, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) -- who are linked in the title and in life. All the supporting cast, including the often quirky choices for cameos -- like James Carville as the governor -- work well. Some, like Mary Louise Parker's Zee James seem underused, but the film was cut to its theatrical length so their full performances may be awaiting the DVD.

Brad Pitt resembles, to a great degree, photos of James, especially at rest. He makes the character something more than a deranged killer. The motivations of Jesse, his brother, Frank (Sam Shepard)and the rest of their kith and kin from Clay County, Missouri can be argued, but they felt that they had reasons for what they did both in the War and after. For the most part, they stole from entities that they considered part of the Union and the Eastern Yankee machine that had defeated them, humiliating the South into the bargain. Reconstruction was ugly and the border warfare before, during and after the war was some of the worst most mean-spirited fighting there was.

At one point the question is asked -- did Bob Ford want to be like Jesse or to be him? The hero worship at the beginning turns rancid -- as it often does in stalker cases (and that's what this is in modern terms) and eventually the fan -- Ford -- kills his idol. Of course, there was also a reward involved and the chance to be the man who shot Jesse James and the fame that went with it. All that makes for an irresistible package. Affleck certainly takes us on that journey with him and allows us to see the younger Ford brother make his way from one point on the arc to the other, ending his life with no fanfare, no ballads, stories, books or much interest in him except as "the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard and laid poor Jesse in his grave."

The film is beautiful but it is also almost disturbingly violent, with the violence coming with little or no warning. I'm not unused to violence or gunshots and I jumped a few times sitting in the theater. And the gun-play was also believable. In the scene where Bob Ford kills for the first time, the exchange of gunfire between Charlie and Wood Hite at point blank range resulted in only minor wounds. Some will find that hard to believe but I nodded and smiled. Despite all the dime novels and B-movie westerns depicting everyone as a dead shot, most people in those days weren't great shots, even across a room.

A case can be made that Jesse James put himself in front of the gun that Ford wielded so hesitantly. Perhaps he realized that his time was nearly over, that he had no more places to run and huge opposition from the railroad, the Pinkertons who worked for them and a government interested in settling the area and putting the war and violence behind it That was, as I recall, the thrust of the novel from which the film took its major premise and much of the narration.

When this film comes to DVD I will own it. I will recommend it to anyone with an interest in western history, in complex characters and in beautiful cinematography -- although you can't really make Canada look and act like Missouri -- but with a caveat that you need to bring something to this movie and that includes the patience to allow the story to unfold at its own funereal pace. I felt rewarded for having done so as did Ana. Money and time well spent, for sure.