In a sentenceCasey Affleck makes meeting your hero look like a sound argument for staying at home
Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) wants the attention of Jesse James (Brad Pitt), the outlaw he regards as a hero. Their association brings Ford close to the man behind the reputation, whose suspicion and capacity for violence complicate his admirer’s longing for recognition. Andrew Dominik’s western follows a relationship in which fame and dependence shape the way each man sees the other. Sam Rockwell plays Charley Ford, with Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil and Sam Shepard as Frank James.
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Andrew Dominik’s western is absorbing and often uncomfortable, with Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt making hero worship hard to watch. The pace needs patience, and some scenes repeat the point, but the performances repay the attention.
Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a fine western about the misery of wanting a famous man to notice you. Adapting Ron Hansen’s novel, Dominik gives that wish time to become uncomfortable, and occasionally gives it more time than it needs. At 160 minutes, the film makes a substantial demand on an evening. We recommend it, though its close attention to these men includes stretches when they tell us little we have not already understood.
Casey Affleck’s Robert Ford is the reason to accept that demand. His admiration for Jesse James is so bound up with his wish to matter that even their ordinary exchanges seem dangerous: James can withhold the attention Ford needs. We felt painfully embarrassed for Ford, because Affleck makes his appetite for approval impossible to overlook. The performance allows us to recognise something familiar in that need without making Ford easy company, and it gives the film a discomfort that no amount of gunfire could supply.
Brad Pitt understands how much power James has simply by being the person Ford wants to watch. His Jesse can hold our interest without earning our affection, and Pitt makes the paranoia and ruthlessness difficult to excuse as the burdens of fame. The uneasy dependence between the two gives the dialogue its tension, even when the words themselves are unremarkable. Dominik is alert to the cruelty of unequal admiration, especially when Ford’s need for recognition becomes another reason to deny it.
Roger Deakins’s landscape photography invites us to enjoy looking at this world, which is an uncomfortable pleasure given James’s ruthlessness. The softness of the images can make the outlaw legend seductive even when Pitt is making the man difficult to like. Patricia Norris and Richard Hoover give the period settings enough detail to sustain the long looks Dominik takes at them. Norris also designs the costumes, and their restraint helps to keep the people credible within these carefully composed images.
The editing by Curtiss Clayton and Dylan Tichenor trusts long takes and permits exchanges to become awkward. That patience is often justified, but there are repetitions which tell us again that Ford is obsessed and James dangerous. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s mournful score gives the waiting a sadness that keeps Ford’s need for approval from seeming merely ridiculous. The narration is less reliable, too often explaining feelings the actors have already made clear.
There is a worthwhile risk in making a western depend so heavily on men watching and misreading each other. Dominik accepts that risk, and the lead performances supply enough tension to carry us through the slack passages, though the hushed dialogue occasionally makes us work harder than we should. The film’s fascination with fame is convincing because Ford’s need to be noticed remains so recognisably ordinary. Give it an evening when there is time to settle, and no expectation of a brisk succession of shoot-outs.
Most critics respond warmly to Andrew Dominik’s slow, psychologically focused Western, with praise clustering around Roger Deakins’ cinematography and the performances of Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. The relationship between James and Ford supplies the chief source of tension: the reviews repeatedly identify obsessive admiration, male vulnerability and the desire for recognition as compelling subjects. Supporters find the patient pacing absorbing and value the film’s attention to how outlaw reputations are made.
The spread of opinion is wide, however, and length troubles even some admirers. The sharper disagreement concerns whether the film’s visual beauty and deliberate pace deepen its characters or leave them stranded. The New Yorker finds the narration excessive and the drama tiresome; The Hollywood Reporter argues that repetition smothers the central relationship. The New York Times takes a mixed position, admiring the photography and Affleck while finding insufficient historical or emotional depth.
A dark, iconoclastic Western that recalls moody revisionist classics and features strong performances from Pitt and Affleck in exploring the tense dynamic between outlaw and assassin.
Read the full review →The critic praises Dominik's slow-moving but gripping and tremendously observed revisionist western for its self-possession and grandeur. He highlights the psychological duel between Jesse James and Robert Ford, along with strong performances from Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck.
Read the full review →Dominik's ravishing, magisterial poetic epic moves its characters toward tragic destinies with Greek-drama implacability and stands as one of the best Westerns of the 1970s. McCarthy singles out the surpassing visual beauty, Roger Deakins' luminous cinematography, layered performances by Pitt and Affleck, and meticulous historical and psychological detail.
Read the full review →The film explores the charged, almost erotic tension between Jesse James and his obsessive admirer Robert Ford as it builds inexorably toward the inevitable murder. Ebert praises the epic Western scope, Roger Deakins' cinematography, and the lead performances that capture mythic stature and star-struck fixation.
Read the full review →Dominik’s film traces the paths of James and Ford in a Gothic tête-à-tête that queries the title and delivers emotional foreboding, making it a red-raw classic despite a flabby coda.
Read the full review →The critic praises Dominik’s epic retelling for daring to invest in the hero and highlighting male vulnerability and co-dependence. It notes the film is too long and slow but values its character studies and style.
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1982 · Another admirer mistakes proximity to fame for a life of his own.
1977 · For compromised men, uneasy dependence and the dread of agreeing to the wrong favour.
1968 · A wintry western whose patience makes its cruelty harder to shrug off.
2005 · A harsher Australian western, with family loyalty making every choice more painful.
2018 · Watchful men, corrosive envy and long silences that gradually become difficult to bear.
