The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Overrated and overhyped

hyped garbage

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a very excellent movie to some people, while to others it is viewed as boring and monotonous. The way you see this film is completely dependent on how you view film. Whether you view film as an art form that needs to be examined and analyzed, or you view film as a simple way to have fun.If you enjoy film as an art form, then you will most probably like this movie. The movie goes over topics like what is good and what is bad, what is accepted in society and what is not, how does fame affect our viewpoint on people, and etc. It's cinematography is beautiful, the acting is superb, and the script is well done. The score in this film is enough to give this film a six, at least in my opinion. The score is so enchanting and prolific to the figures represented in this film. Overall, if you enjoy dissecting and analyzing a meaningful art film, I would recommend this film to you.However, as excellent as the movie is, it still has it's drawbacks. For one, if you like films for the action, I wouldn't recommend this to you. The pacing is extremely slow, to the point where some parts can be incredibly boring. And I know there are people who expect this film to be exciting, considering it is a western, but the movie does not focus on the action. The movie focuses on understanding the minds of the characters in the story. So if you are interesting in seeing this movie, don't expect a traditional western. I want all of you to understand that this movie is not all about Jesse James. This movie is somewhat like a satire, a film that idolizes Jesse James to make you realize how much he really was idolized. It goes behind the mind of Robert Ford and some of the people closest to Jesse. The film doesn't want you to grow feelings of disgust towards Jesse James, but rather a feeling of understanding. In conclusion, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a spectacle, but only to the right people.

Wow! This is by far the most incredibly boring film I think I have ever seen. Brad Pitt should really be ashamed of TRYING to portray Jessie James. My God, Pitt shows almost NO emotion of any kind through out 2 hours and 40 minutes of the worst kind of torture......bad acting, stupid voice over, terrible plot lines and equally pathetic supporting actors. What a total wast of time. Stay away at all costs. Probably the very worst aspect of the overly long Hollywood mistake was the horrible voice over of Robert Ford. I did not fully understand what he was trying to do with the film. What ever he was trying to do didn't work at all. It seemed the only reason for them extreme length of the bizarre western was to get all of the voice over into the film. I say that Pitt playing Jesse should have been killed off in the first 10 minutes of this "Titanic"of a film. I can only give this film a 1 out of 10.

Released in 2007 and directed by Andrew Dominik, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" stars Brad Pitt as the famous outlaw in a chronicling of the last seven months of his life. The movie begins with the Blue Cut Train Robbery that took place in Missouri on September 7, 1881. Casey Affleck co-stars as Robert Ford, a 20 year-old member of Jesse's gang, who kills James for the reward, but also (presumeably) because he and his brother, Charles (Sam Rockwell), feared Jesse was going to kill them. The final 25 minutes detail the Ford brothers lives over the course of the next decade after James' execution on April 3, 1882. Paul Schneider,Garret Dillahunt, Jeremy Renner, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Kailin See and Zooey Deschanel have notable support roles.This is a funereal, realistic Western consisting of long dramatic sequences spiced with flashes of violence. Although critically praised, it bombed at the box office and some people scoff at it as a slow bore, but I found it pretty mesmerizing, even haunting. There are numerous highlights during its 2 hour and 40 minutes, like the opening train robbery, the outhouse rendezvous between Schneider and See, the tense gunfight in the upstairs of a frontier house, Jesse's death and the interesting aftermath.The movie makes a point of depicting Jesse as a paranoid man on his way to an early grave because of his foolish choice to be an unrepentant outlaw. At least Frank James (Shepard) had the scruples to leave outlawry and move east. Jesse is shown lamenting what his life had become and even shooting one of his comrades in the back, like a coward, not to mention abusing an adolescent. Yes, Ford later shoots Jesse in the back, but it had to be done. Jesse's days were numbered due to his own bad choices. Plus Robert and his brother were afraid that Jesse was going to shoot them at any moment. Also keep in mind that Jesse wasn't no frickin' Robin Hood; he stole from the rich and regular folks alike and gave to... well, himself. In light of all this the title of the movie is purely ironic, but when the legend becomes fact, print the legend, as they say.The Alberta and Manitoba locations are picturesque, but they don't look like Missouri and Kentucky (and surrounding states), where the events took place. These are Eastern states, albeit "midwest." The locations in the movie look like what they are -- the northern prairie. "The Long Riders" (1980) is more accurate on this count.GRADE: B+

The movie "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is an indefinable movie creating extreme reactions after being watched. The terms describing it would vary from mesmerizing or deep to plain lackluster. The reactions can be justified if the traits of this iconoclastic work are considered. It's a western lacking the elements of western movies. It's a drama but at the same time includes few features of a comedy. Although the movie can be rightly identified with any of these genres, it's quite perceptible that limiting it to any of the given genres would be unjust.But the astonishing feat achieved by the director is beyond that since the prominence of the movie is revealed to the audience through characterization. The trap in which the movie shrewdly avoided being entangled was delving deep into the psyches of the characters and the transmutation undergone by them. The historical aspect of this depiction is just a façade of the story which is given out to the audience from the outset in the title. The movie succeeds in conflating the characteristics of the characters so as the cowardice of Robert Ford and the courage in Jesse James wouldn't have been comprehended without each other. It seemed as if the glorification granted on James was realized through the pusillanimity depicted by Robert Ford since he stood for the opposite of whatever the other one possessed. History has no way other than being biased on the side of the narrator for it is being told by a person. A person with a general tendency of the mind. This tendency can be modified but never eliminated since the narrator lives in a specific time with specific standards and moral codes. So, to put it in a nutshell, the narrated history can never be the real one because it is conveyed by the people already familiarized not only with the story but also with the idea of other people on the incident. The movie is well-aware of that and its attempt to negate the bias and didacticism implied in the story is twofold. First, the language used in the voice-over narration is literary and book-like unlike the everyday language of the characters. This contrast is an evident effort of the director reminding the audience of the storification of the incident. Second, the dream like scenes provided with blurry margins of the screen added to the elements of the untrustworthy narration since they were represented as memories. Masood Abdollahi