A story of the last days of the notorious Jesse James, and the man who came to regret killing him.

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 2010)

"I'm saying his sins will soon find him out. I'm saying his cup of iniquity is full. I'm saying Jesse James is a desperate case and may require a desperate remedy."
The Assassination of Jesse James is about as far from your usual shoot 'em up, bang bang, western yarn, as you can get. It's actually a character study. A particularly measured and slowly paced character study. But it works on the strength of it's great cast and solid writing.
Casey Affleck is wonderful as the unsettling, perpetually nervous, shifty man whose unnerving obsession with Jesse James is uncomfortably obvious. And Brad Pitt continues to impress, as he presents James as a charismatic, dangerous, and paranoid man (though his accent was a little iffy, at times). The supporting cast of talented actors like Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, Mary-Louise Parker, and Zooey Deschanel, are all favorites of mine, and all perfectly suited for their roles.
Some people may find the pace to be a little TOO glacial, but it would be a crime for a movie with cinematography this beautiful to be rushed. Some of the backdrops and settings are almost breathtaking, with snow-covered roads and fields of grain featuring colors that seem almost too vivid to be natural. I'm a big fan of striking scenery in my movies, and this one certainly gets my seal of approval in that regard.
The Assassination of Jesse James is not a short movie, and it's value is in the interactions of the characters, not in the robberies (which we see only one of) and romanticized-western action that we would normally associate with the near-legendary story of the James Gang. I found it to be worthwhile. It raises questions about what makes a man a hero or a villain in the public's eyes, and by the end of the film, we find out that those questions have interesting answers.