(2007) Director Andrew Dominik's screenplay, adapted from Ron Hansen's novel, with a haunting, moody, brooding score from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, featuring plaintive piano and evocative violin, dramatizes notorious historical figures inside anabolic atmospherics (a synthesis of seasons, weather, and emotional currents forming a critical climate of heightened feeling).

"All America thinks highly of me," boast Jesse James. Americans still love outlaws. "But that dirty little coward/ Who shot Mr. Howard/ Has laid Jesse in his grave."

With his wife Zee (Mary-Louise Parker) and two young children (not three as in the song), Jesse Woodson James (Brad Pitt) lived a seemingly respectable life in Kansas City as Thomas Howard, cattleman and commodities trader. From 1867 to 1881, the James Gang had pulled off more than 25 bank robberies.

A few days after September 5, 1882, when he turned 34, Jesse and his oldest brother Alexander Franklin "Frank" James (Sam Shepard) - the only remaining members of their original band of bandits (everyone else dead or incarcerated) - waited in Blue Cut, Missouri, with a collection of (interjects narrator Hugh Ross) "petty thieves and country rubes culled from the countryside" to rob a train.

Hero-worshipping, nineteen-year-old Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), eager to become a sidekick, tells Frank: "I got an appetite for greater things." Bob studies Jesse as if he were to become the desperado's biographer or impersonator; from childhood he'd been reading pulp-fiction publications, such as those by R.W. Stevens, of the James Gang's exploits. "They're all lies," says Jesse. Bob's brother Charley (Sam Rockwell) reiterates the desire by touting their "courage and daring."

Others in the gang include the poetic ("You can hide things in vocabulary") Andrew James "Dick" Liddil (Paul Schneider) and Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt).

Sitting at home with a pair of snakes wrapped around his arm, Jesse says to Bob: "I can't figure you out. Do you wanna be like me or do you want to be me?" The fathers of both the James and Ford families were pastors; both Bob and Jesse were the blue-eyed youngest child.

Soon afterward, with a reward on his head and Jesse feeling suspicious, the Howards like the holy family's flight from Egypt vanish from Kansas City; two of his men are captured. Through the cold of winter Jesse begins riding from man to man, beginning in Kentucky with Ed Miller, saying good-bye to the gang.

Meanwhile, Dick goes with Jesse's cousin Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) for a visit with Wood's father, an elderly geezer with an attractive young wife. When Dick finds a little pussy in the privy, Wood shoots Liddil, wounding him. Looking for Jim Cummins, Jesse, suffering from insomnia and respiratory congestion, arrives at Bob and Charley's where they live with their sister Martha, just after Bob has killed Wood who was about to shoot Dick at close range; they hide Wood's demise from his emotionally unpredictable cousin. Jesse tells Charley and Bob he's reminded of George Shepherd, a man with a grudge he killed for lying.

Bob, working in a grocery store, turns informant, helping Capt Henry Craig (Michael Parks) and Sheriff James Timberlake apprehend Dick Liddil, recovering from his leg wound; Missouri's Governor Crittenden (James Carville, the Democratic political operative) personally speaks to Bob, unaware of the young man's criminal involvement. Frank James had long since moved to Baltimore. Jesse and Charley, returning together after planning but failing to pull off any holdups, approach Bob: "You've been chosen."

Paranoid, feeling cornered and ornery, Jesse's mood swings precariously in the company of Charley and Bob; Charley becomes certain Jesse intends to kill them while Bob believes Jesse has unriddled reasons. On April 3rd, 1882, the Monday after Palm Sunday, Jesse disregards his instincts, letting down his guard at home with Zee, his two children, and the Ford brothers.

Why did he do it, asks his mistress Ella Mae Waterson; because he was scared, answers Bob, and for the reward money. In New York City Bob and Charley re-enact the assassination over 800 times on the stage, with Charley playing the part of Jesse; but allegations of his cowardliness - Weren't the victims at least grateful? - driving him back west to Colorado where in 1892 Edward O'Kelly comes looking for him.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .