The Assassination Of Jesse James

The Assassination Of Jesse James, No review of the film is complete without a dismissive reference to the length of the title ― preferably one sighing about how it reflects the film’s overlong running time ― but I actually like how long the title is; it fits the material.

I don’t envy the dudes who had to get up on the old-school cinema signboards and try to cram it in there, mind you (to all those ladies and gentlemen of movieplex employment who may have rendered it “The Ass. Of Jesse James,” I salute you), but it’s how things got titled back then. Even a garden-variety mid-season baseball game ― pardon me, “base-ball match” ― from the turn of the last century, meaningless in the standings, unexceptional in the details, often got saddled with a series of rococo subheds silk-pursing the sow’s ear of your average 3-1 box score with absinthe-y nonsense like “Lajoie Addresses Dish, But Must Go Hungry ― Angry Zephyr Of Waddell Fast-Ball Makes Windy Contrast To Stony Silence Of Injun Bats ― Sunny Day Darkened By Inexcusable Error On Routine Play By The Man Currently Defending Short-Stop Territory Against All Comers, Herein Described In Pitiless Detail By Way Of Norse Mythology’s Most Violent Chapter.”

But that was the era; they had to sell papers, and in the cases of both Wild-West tales and baseball, they had to gin it up with literary allusions so that educated or higher-class people could feel okay about consuming it. The divide between the dime-novel Jesse James and the real one is made nearly explicit in Assassination, so I think the title does its job; my problem is that, whenever I say it aloud, I keep messing up and saying “Richard Ford” ― so our anti-hero isn’t shot in the head, but rather frustrated to death by Updike-lite prose stylings. (This of course led to an extended back-and-forth with Skyrockets about various sequels ― The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Henry Ford, in which James is run down by a Model A, the be-road-goggled father of the automobile grimly gripping the wheel…The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Gerald Ford, James tumbles down a short flight of steps…you get the idea.)

The movie itself, I enjoyed. Good performances, good pacing ― I suspect that the length of the denouement is something people may have objected to, but while I do think the movie is too long, I wouldn’t pare any time from the story post-James’s death. It’s prior to it that the scenes tend to go on too long and repeat themselves: James gets suspicious, visits a friend to gauge his loyalty, toys with the man a while prior to shooting him, lather rinse repeat. The problem here is that the audience may start to wonder 1) why James doesn’t just kill them right up front, if that’s how it’s always going to end (and if his apparent reason for wanting them dead is not angry caprice, but fear of exposure); and 2) why they don’t in turn just kill James, who is clearly dangerous and an asshole to boot. Of course this can’t happen in the film, primarily because this didn’t happen, and I think we’re meant to understand that James has an emotional power over, and for, these guys, as he had over the nation at the time (and still does, culturally). But when scenes in which James acts like your shitbird boss go on longer than they should, the intended effect ― as above, to distinguish between Jesse James and Jesse James? ― is lost.

Still, credit to Brad Pitt, who may not have gotten enough recognition for his work here given the baggage it (and he, tabloid-wise, at this point) comes with ― it’s his portrayal of James’s arrogance and volatility that raises this issue, really, which isn’t a bad problem to have. Ditto Rockwell as Charley, and Sam Shepard, whose short turn as Frank James at the movie’s beginning is probably what got me on the story’s side. Shepard’s acting is pretty limited unless he’s cast correctly, and he’s perfect here. And Affleck is fantastic, but I’ve always liked that guy; the entertainment’s press’s “discovery” of him in the last year is funny to me. I’ve loved the guy since Good Will Hunting and Desert Blue.