An artsy western

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2007)

While it's easy to name a few spaghetti westerns, artsy westerns are more difficult to come by. The only one that comes to mind is "McCabe and Mrs Miller" (1971) and I'm not even sure if everyone agrees. And to those who think that "3:10 to Yuma" is slow and too long, think again! "The assassination etc" has a runtime of 160 minutes to match its title. Whether this is too long is purely subjective, depending entirely on ones expectations. With a full presence of voice over narration and chapter-like structure, this movie is not unlike a book, on the legendary story of the larger-than-life figure of Jesse James, THE train robber.
What strikes me most is actually the cinematography. The movie LOOKS so artsy, if nothing else. Every shot is framed for a photo competition  low angle with the sun and/or sky in the background, shots reflecting from glass and through glass, wheat fields in the wind, close up shots (shoe in field, water running from tap), snow/ice-clad scenes..  I've hardly even started the list.
As the story unfolds, it gradually and eventually becomes clear that the focus is on betrayal, how a "coward" such a Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) gets to kill the most-feared bandit Jesse James (Brad Pitt). Other important characters involved are Robert's brother Charley (Sam Rockwell), James' two right-hand men (one could be left-hand, I suppose) Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) and Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), as well as his older brother Frank (Sam Shepard) who sort of faded out of the picture as the movie progressed. The intricate relationship between these figures will play out all through the movie.
The acting is just fine. Pitt takes up the challenge of a middle-aged role of a figure that is charismatic to the point of being terrifying. Affleck, often starting a sentence an octave higher than normal, conveys various shades of a somewhat enigmatic figure with a great deal of subtleties underneath the deceptively childlike simplicity.