Why Didn't Anyone See This?

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 2008)

It's unbelievable that a film starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Rockwell didn't have a bigger audience when it was released over a year ago. The cast alone should, in theory, bring people to see it, but on top of that the movie itself is great. Roger Deakins' cinematography, along with a beautiful somber score have all the makings of an instant Hollywood classic.
Despite the fact that the film was nominated for best supporting actor and it's photography, The Assassination of Jesse James...tanked at the box office. That may be because it was marketed as a western when it most clearly is not...at least not in the sense that we know a western. The gun fights are short, few and very far between. What we are given instead is a psychological profile of two men destined to become some of the most infamous people in American history and mythology. It provides a historical context as well as a character driven narrative that combines for a fascinating look at this country's "glory days" of the old west.
Affleck plays the young man (from the title we know what he will do) who is obsessed with his childhood idol Jesse James. As the youngest of three, Robert Ford joins the James gang in order to hang with the big boys and prove something to his brothers, and more importantly, to Jesse James. Ford is taunted by other members of the gang when they find old pulp novels about the gang's adventures. The books are something that Ford keeps hidden in a cigar box under bed, almost as a treasure that he keeps all for himself. These books have helped forge his perception of the gang, and are the basis of the myth surrounding the gang's young dynamic leader. Ford is clearly a character representing all of us: children who believe the myths told to us as fact. Unfortunately, Bob comes to find that there isn't much to those stories and that the James Gang is a group of men concerned with making money, killing, and backstabbing each other.
The relationship between Pitt's character and his young future assassin is what drives the story not to a satisfying climax in which hero triumphs over villain, but an ending that negates everything we've been told about the old west and about America. The film is extremely subtle with how it does this. Too often in other films (Oliver Stone's, for example) is the American Dream chewed up and spit back at the viewer while the director sits with a hammer, ready to pound the point home. Not in this movie. True, the film makes it's point obvious that there is nothing romantic about the old west, but the motivations behind the assassination are blurred. It's not enough to say that Ford killed Jesse because he wanted to do the right thing: he didn't. It would be too easy to say that Ford killed Jesse because he wanted to prove himself (it's possible, but that's not what the film believes). The motivations become a mix of Ford wanting, not merely to be like Jesse James, but to be him.
When the last frame finally fades out, one walks away from it, not merely commenting on the fact that these men are not the heroes of the old west that we heard about (besides any person with half a brain knows that). The film leaves you satisfied, not because you've seen a great movie, but because nothing was left out (at almost three hours, it shouldn't). You come to understand these men, to be invested in them, and that taken with the overall disillusionment of the old west culminates to one of the best films of 2007.