Ad Astra

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2009)

Man, is this an ambitious movie. It's long and punctuated only at lengthy intervals by any kind of gunplay. There is a narration in the style of a turn-of-the-century pulp Western novel. "His moodiness modeled him. It dungeoned him." Such a style beggars all description in a familiar Western story about the shooting of Jesse James, a crumb bum of the first order.
Except that this is only barely a Western. They ride horses, naturally, and carry pistols, but it takes place in locations ranging from Kansas through Missouri to Kentucky. Nobody is a cowboy. You don't hear nothing' about nobody a-squattin' on the range or holdin' up stagecoaches. No, nor anything about Indians neither. Which, if you're prompted to think about it, is a little loopy since the Battle of Little Bighorn was only twelve years old when James was shot in the back while adjusting a picture on the wall of his home in 1888. For that matter, Lizzie Borden at the time was building up steam enough in Massachussetts to chop up her father, and Sherlock Holmes was in pursuit of Professor Moriarty in London. Exciting times.
It won't be necessary, I hope, to detail the story. For one thing, pretty much everyone already has some grasp of the mythos. For another, the plot, as presented here, is pretty complicated. The film may be only barely a Western but it's certainly a period drama full of intrigue, shifting allegiances, and obscure motives, with a barely concealed but constant undercurrent of betrayal leading to violence.
We only see one railroad robbery and that's at the very start, the only scene in which Sam Shepard makes an appearance as Frank James. The hold up takes place at night. It's very impressively done. The artful photography of Roger Deakins captures the approaching train, seemingly an unstoppable mass of iron, in an almost spooky fashion. The score is by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and it's distinctively current -- no folksy violins or other clichés.
Following this lone hold up, though, we must then follow the plot. I couldn't do it. I was lost among the dozen or so gang members and their kinship bonds. I don't know why Brad Pitt, as Jesse James, shot a man in the back after asking him to take a ride in the darkness. I could unravel the reasoning behind the killing of Wood Hite, or at least part of it. Another man was boffing Hite's old uncle's young wife and Hite initiated a gun fight to punish the guilty. Why Bob Ford, Casey Affleck, decided to shoot Hite eluded my understanding, since Bob Ford had no dog in that hunt, as they say.
Brad Pitt is pretty good in the role of James. In some of his movies I thought he might be another heart throb who began to fade the moment he appeared in the public consciousness. When he showed up, all bulked up, in things like "Troy," I was almost sure of it. But he has greater range than that and evidently more endurance. Casey Affleck is Bob Ford and he's equally fine. His face is a little askew. His eyes look in slightly different direction, his high voice is cracked, and the actor adopts a slyly innocent, open-mouthed, slack-smiled demeanor that is as appropriate as it is misleading.
The script is overblown but not dumb. Compared to the early Twentieth-Century Fox version, it's a masterpiece of maturity. In 1939, Tyrone Power and his friends were unambiguously good, except for the cowards Bob and Charlie Ford, who were unambiguously treacherous. Not to put down the enjoyable 1939 tale. I'm sure there are liberties taken with the historical facts in this version too, but it doesn't leave the viewer feeling that he's just watched a fairy tale with a sad ending -- "The Little Match Murderer" or "Hansel, Gretl, and Jesse".