Review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) by David P — 05 Mar 2015

This is movie-making at its finest. The scenery is gripping, powerful, and dark. The soundtrack is haunting, bleak, and carries with it a certain emptiness that teeters on the edge of sanity. The movie itself is a brilliant character-study, not a western so much as it is a psychological drama.

Brad Pitt portrays James as a very intelligent but highly paranoid sociopath who is an expert at reading people and seems to always be a step ahead of anyone else. The tone of the room completely changes when Jesse is in it, and this is uncomfortably palpable as you watch the movie.

When Jesse asks a question, he doesn't do it to know the answer but instead to see how the person reacts to the question(most of the time it seems like he knows the answer to his questions already); when someone asks Jesse a question, his mind isn't directed toward answering but instead is driven towards a suspicion of why the question was asked to begin with.

You get the feeling that everything Jesse does is calculated and premeditated, even his own death. Casey Affleck plays Robert Ford wonderfully as an insecure young man with story-book dreams of being famous but very little insight to the fact that his off-putting personality is not one people are drawn to(but instead mock).

Jesse James, his long-time idol for which he had an unhealthy obsession, does not respond to him as perhaps he had dreamed, and he realizes he will never achieve fame the way Jesse did. He resorts to cowardly measures that, for a time, make him feel as big as he thinks he should be but they ultimately fail and lead to a downfall that he deserves.

It leaves you wondering, was it Robert Ford who assassinated Jesse James or was it the other way around? This is a movie I will remember for a long time.