Worth Seeing.Visually: beautifully ethereal, much too long, but good despite that.

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2007)

This is a fine movie.Better than 3:10 to Yuma, which is of course simply a very well crafted old fashioned horse opera.I don't know if it succeeds in what it wanted to portray about Jesse James, with too many brooding "I'm squirrelly" scenes with Brad Pitt.This movie would have easily easily been an Oscar nominee for best picture this year if it had had 30 to 40 minutes judiciously chopped out.There are some imperfect clumsy scenes including their take on the famous Jesse James assassination scene.That said, there are many many more great scenes in this film.It is intelligent,has a nice score, respects the viewer, and has a wonderful time warp "ghost of history" look. Casey Affleck steals the show from solid inspired performances by the other actors including Brad Pitt.The competent use of narration keeps the overly long indulgences of the film in check,barely sometimes though.This is clearly a case where they could not muster the courage to coldly cut beautiful well shot footage and tighten the film up.