Captures all the mood and atmosphere of the good western, but not always engaging

Rating: 7/10 (16 May 2010)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
In the early days of motion pictures, the western was at the pinnacle of it's game, being the landmark of American cinema and capturing the idyllic image of the 'cowboy' as the fearless hero with a no nonsense attitude and a grizzled image, giving the world the first 'big screen hero' in the shape of John Wayne...and this would last through out the years as those like Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood would take over the template and keep the legend alive. Nowadays, it's a rarity...although films like the re-make of 3:10 to Yuma and Ed Harris's Appaloosa do come by, in modern times it's a defining genre of cinema that's pretty much been allowed to fall by the wayside. Andrew Dominik's mouthful of a title is an attempt to revive this type of film is a lengthy, ambitious and fairly heavy piece that has all the right ingredients at hand in terms of mood, atmosphere and slow, lingering tension that somehow fixate our eyes on the main characters...but fails to really craft a truly absorbing or coherent story that is a problem when it's demanding your attention for so long.
As deep and as dim as it is, it's trying to engage you more in the characters than the plot, and so it befalls the performers to bring the show to life. In the lead role as the main titular character, Brad Pitt has the job of bringing the fire and madness inside James's soul to life, as he displays signs of losing control and going completely over the edge, yet still manages to remain the most elusive outlaw in the United States. As the second titular character, as the young pretender Ford, Casey Affleck shows early signs of promise before his break through role in brother Ben's Gone Baby Gone, as the hopelessly infatuated young man who can't spin a line to any of James's associates and can never prove himself as a true man. Both are well cast, and are complimented by quite a supporting cast including Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner and female players in the shape of Mary Louise Parker and Brooklyn Proulx.
It's a film that opened to great critical acclaim but limited box office success...the reason may be it had all the right elements in place, but couldn't use them in the right way to engage it's audience. In a day and age when this genre has far less gravitas, this is a deadly mistake to make. ***