A Slow train arrives too!

Rating: 8/10 (31 October 2007)

This has been hell of a movie... in a wonderful and great sense of the word!
All right, it was incredibly slow paced, very true. But "slow" doesn't mean "boring" at all! When you are a passenger in a car that flies over the road at 200kmh/130mph, you don't see jack of your surrounding, you only have the rush of speed. On a bike, at 20kmh/13mph, you are able to enjoy your environment, the air you breath, the slight wind in your hair and the rays of the summer sun caressing your very face.
Same goes with movies. Fast paced action thingies give you a rush of adrenaline and an exciting experience. But this one, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" isn't like that! If you like "action movies" and "westerns", you probably will be snoring in 30 minutes indeed. There is nearly no action in this motion picture, and it is not meant to! It is a document... the description of two men, struggling against life. The older one struggles with despair and paranoia, the younger one against his urge to become famous. None of them (and really no one in the entire movie) carries away your sympathy. Why not? Because this movie isn't about sympathetic people. This movie isn't about heroes or helpful men who endanger their lives for others. Every single character in this movie is a regular human being in some ways: focused on their own gain in one way or another. Not even the lawmen are depicted as being nice people. Why? Well, wake up! Jesse and his gang are outlaws! And not the Robin Hood like outlaws as they are sometimes depicted like, but ruthless highwaymen and even killers. Well, face it... they WERE ruthless killers and robbers!
And the coppers? Well, most of them were recruited from the bad guys at those times. Former gunslingers who were offered to stand up against other gunslingers to either kill or arrest them.
Women play an subordinated part in the movie. Why? Because this movie is the work of a women hater and sexist? No, not by far! Back in the late nineteenth century, women WERE supposed to be good for housekeeping and bearing children, and nothing else... even though that is FAR from true, of course. In that sense, the women in the movie aren't really "there". They have little screen time and if they are shown, they take background roles and are mostly at home, as it is quite expectable.
Brad Pitt's Jesse James was a man to get the creeps by. You cannot grasp him. You never know what is brewing beneath his scalp. You cannot predict him, cannot understand him. Pitt switches between the different aspects of a troubled mind neatly and convinces in his part as the neurotic or even psychotic gunslinger.
Casey Affleck does a tremendous job too. His Robert Ford has all the marks of another troubled mind. When talking, he cannot hold eye contact for a long time. He hides his malfunctioning understanding of the idea of "conscience" behind a dreamy look in his eyes and a shy smile.
Sam Rockwell... well yeah... Sam Rockwell... The man who played the bad guy in "Charlie's Angels 1", and who starred in "Confessions of a dangerous Mind". He seemed to be a chameleon before and he has proved he is in this very special movie. While he gave Charlie's Angels a bit of a level, he really was a bang in CoadM. In tAoJJbtCRF he plays the not so smart brother of Robert Ford who has quite some wisdom and life experience though, even if nobody gives him that credit.
The camera work was magnificent. The opening scenes with the train robbery, phew... it really straightened the very hair on my arms. The goose bumps went away a quarter of an hour after the movie only. One tremendous camera shot after the other. Magnificent!
Without the slightest doubt, this would have been the most impressive movie I have seen in quite some while if I hadn't seen "Ben X" a short time ago.
I can completely understand though, if many people did not like this movie. It is no Con Air or Ichi The Killer. If you are into relaxing and exciting entertainment, please do yourself a favour and skip this very movie. Here you will be obligated to sniff the atmosphere and to think all of the time.