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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Brand: PITT,BRAD EAN: 0012569763739 Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 05, 2008 Running Time: 160 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: 2007 Sales Rank: 632 MPN: 012569763739
Product Description: No Description Available. Genre: Westerns Rating: R Release Date: 5-FEB-2008 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com: Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a backshooting crony.
The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand–born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper (2000), was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise.
Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerizing in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a wellnigh-novelistic backstory for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie "Western" The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.
Still, the real costar is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few Westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Western Art
Westerns are constantly being reinvented. Sometimes just adequately. But sometimes, as in the case of this film, they set the bar for a whole new level of enjoyment within the genre. And ironically, (much ... Read More
Rating: - Movie: 4/5 Picture Quality: 3.5/5 Sound Quality: 3/5 Extras: 0.5/5
Version: U.S.A / Region A, B, C
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
VC-1 BD-25
Average video bit rate: 15.70 Mbps
Running time: 2:39:40
Movie size: 22,41 GB
Disc size: 23,94 GB
DD ... Read More
Rating: - You have to watch it twice...
I would like to say that I "hated" this movie or that it "was great." But neither is true. To get it, you must watch it twice. Because the movie works with underlayments of psychological interaction, you pick ... Read More
Rating: - Dull at a first glance amazing at a second
When I began to watch this film I for the most part agreed with the negative reviews on this site. It wasn't exciting, the dialog was simple, and most of all: it moved very, very slow.
Rating: - Great Storytelling
Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck give Oscar-worthy performances in this excellent piece of storytelling. I don't care too much about the real Jesse James (cold-blooded murderer, and certainly no hero), but I must say that ... Read More
- Western Art
- Movie: 4/5 Picture Quality: 3.5/5 Sound Quality: 3/5 Extras: 0.5/5