5 Successful things every western movie must have:
- Characters you care about.
- Exciting gun fights.
- A villain you hate.
- Tragedy followed by revenge
- Poker. Actually every movie should have poker in it.
The western film Im about to talk about has none of these things.
Our Wake me up in 2 hours movie is TAOJJBTCRF. Ive spelled the title out once, and Im not going to spell it out again. While the title may seem to go on forever, it actually fits for a film that seems to go on for forever. After two years, Jessie James is finally going to be released after having been re-edited more times then the studio can count. It has lingered in between having a three hour runtime to having a two hour runtime, so they decided to just stick to a runtime of about two and a half hours. If youre starting to notice how I havent actually begun to talk about the film itself, its because just writing about it will probably put me to sleep.
Brad Pitt is trying to get audiences to forget his performance as a pretty Tarzan in Legends of the Fall by playing a scoundrel. While I actually enjoyed Legends, especially when Anthony Hopkins does his comical performance as a stroke victim, it was a pretty gay movie. Pitt plays the legendary thief, robber, and murderer Jesse James. Casey Affleck is Robert Ford, a man pretending to be James friend only to eventually shoot him from behind, with Sam Rockwell playing Roberts brother Charley. There are other actors in the movie but theyre about as interesting as these three so Im not even going to bother bringing them up. I do like the actors, but they never sold me on these characters. I couldnt buy Brad Pitt as a crazy badass and Caseys performance was annoying and never grew on me. The only guy who seemed to be able to have some fun with his role was Sam Rockwell, but hes usually spot on no matter what character hes playing.
Theres a minimal amount of action in Assassination, focusing more on Jessies relationship with Robert and Charley. It would be interesting to watch if youre used to seeing western drama pieces on A&E, but here dialogue dominates the film and each scene seems to move at the pace of a roomful of senior citizens playing a game of Bingo. Its sad when older western
TV shows are more fascinating to watch than a new film about the death of one of histories greatest outlaws. Director Andrew Dominik seemed intent on making each scene try to feel like a moving portrait. He also loved camera shots of a door opening, focusing on the scenery outside, and then having a person that we see from behind walk thru said door. He seemed to do that about 5 times in the movie which is overkill if youre trying to be artistic. Some of the shots were pretty to look at, but Im not interested in a western movie if the only things enjoyable in it are the ****ing trees.
The character of Jessie is depicted as a man who wears many hats. One minute hes a loving, caring father, the next minute he has no problem shooting a man he thinks has betrayed him. If you dont know much about the life of the real Jesse James, dont worry. You still wont know very much after having watched this movie since it focuses on Jessies life after telling his gang hes retiring from robbing. Great. Instead of seeing all the cool stuff I get to watch Jessie play
Martha Stewart to his buddies. Theres no sex or nudity in the film either. I was hoping for some to keep my attention focused on the screen rather than count how many rows of seats Warner Brothers has in their screening room, but the only time we think a sex scene is coming its robbed from us when the woman blows out the candle and we go to the next scene. The sex scene, if they had shown it, would have taken place inside of an outhouse which is a perfect location to store all of the **** weve been exposed to in the first half of the film.
During the first half of Jessie James my watch died which was a sure sign from the Gods that Im caught in a time vacuum of suck. The Big Bang, building the Great Wall of China, and shaving Tom Sellecks chest are all events that have a shorter time span than this movie. When we finally get to the scene of Robert shooting Jessie from behind, its depicted as Jessie knowing its coming and accepting his fate which is just stupid since all theyve shown us up to this point is a man hell bent on wanting to stay alive. So for me to accept Jessie as possibly knowing it was coming when he was cleaning one of the pictures on his wall is bull**** and a lame attempt and getting us to feel pity for the character just because female audiences dont want to see Brad Pitt get his brains blown out.
If you absolutely must see every Brad Pitt film then no review will keep you from it. Just be warned that youre in for one long, boring ride. Brad doesnt even dominate the screen time so you had best be a big fan of
Casey Affleck as well since theres a lot of scenes after the assassination that deal with how Roberts shooting of Jessie was portrayed to society. The movie just never seems to end. My advice? Save two hours by reading about Jessie James life on Wikipedia. Its not as painful an experience.
