A creepy and daring look into one of the most destructive, and self-destructive of American anti-heroes
Andrew Dominik has thing for criminals. His first directorial effort, “Chopper,” tells the intense story of Mark "Chopper" Read, a legendary criminal who wrote his autobiography while serving his murder sentence. Searching for a follow up to that was not easy, but Dominik found it in Ron Hansen’s story “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”
Unlike previous treatments of legend Jesse James, this story keeps the focus on the relationship between James and his eventual killer, cousin Bob Ford. Refusing to be a western, the film is a psychological study of the mutual disintegration of the two men. James eventually self-destructs amidst a legion of imaginary devils born of his murderous quest for revenge in the wake of the Civil War. Ford degenerates into a parasite with no life other than the pieces of Jesse James his cousin doles out to him, complete with the psychotic self-hatred and random violence that made up the last days of his life.
Brad Pitt has large shoes to fill, playing a man who has become much bigger in death than he was in life. In the smartest move of the film Dominik devotes zero screen time to the Buffalo Bill antics of the popular version of the American gun-slinger and keeps the focus on his spiraling psychological breakdown. Pitt depicts James not as a fearless Robin Hood supported by the ill-treated Union masses in the wake of the war, but as a traumatized veteran cast adrift in peacetime without closure and with no alternative means to violence in making a living.
Casey Affleck (The “Ocean’s” series, “Lonesome Jim,” “Good Will Hunting”) is cast as Robert Ford. Affleck is fighting to make his own way and get his own piece of the action with brother Ben Affleck and mutual buddy and one-time room mate Matt Damon. He is rubbing shoulders with some major players, including Steve Buscemi directing “Lonesome Jim” and a co-starring role with Morgan Freeman in brother Ben’s soon-to-be-released directorial debut “Gone, Baby, Gone.”
Affleck’s role in this film is to be callow, and he is callow to his soul. All he wants is to have a part of Jesse James to call his own. Eventually he gets his desire but has no idea of the role he has taken on. As it becomes manifest that the world thinks a whole lot more of the outlaw than the man who killed him, his life becomes as hollow as that of his shell-shocked victim.
The film is structured like a classic tragedy. As in classic tragedy, Robert Ford refuses to hear the truth. His destiny and that of his hero are permanently fused; they will live and die together. Not entirely true, but when Ford shoots his hero in the back, the old cousin Bob dies and the new living crucifix of the wages of war lives on.
Exceptional supporting work by Jeremy Renner playing Wood Hite, James’ most direct blood relation after his brother Frank. Hite is ready to stay the course of the highwayman to the end, but views James’ acceptance of Ford as the end of the leader’s ability to execute the business at hand. Like an old gunslinger gone to drink, James’ failure to stand up to the temptations of the physical world is killing his guardian angle.
Garret Dillahunt may have the best sequence in the entire film as the former trusted gang member Ed Miller who has come under the paranoid suspicion of the unraveling gang leader and will be the first to take that last pony ride into the frozen Kansas tundra. Sam Rockwell plays Charley Ford, Robert’s older brother who buys time but is helpless to stop the destruction. Paul Schneider plays Dick Liddil, another gang member who is more interested in the picking the locks of the local womanry than mastering gang politics.
Release: September 21, 2007
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