Too Long And Too Muddled, But Great Characters

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2008)

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is a perplexing film in scope, subject, and style.
The first thing that hits most people is the title. I mean, how long does a film's title have to be? Although I understand WHY they settled on it, I still feel that alternatives must've been out there.
The next is the length of the movie itself. At over 2 hours and 40 minutes, it's a behemoth in terms of size. I understand, too, that the original uncut version was a bit over 4 hours. Four hours! Thank goodness they cut it down. But I feel more cuts were needed and a better direction taken with the movie as a whole.
The biggest issue I have is that the entire production seemed to have difficulties deciding on who the main character was. Was it Robert Ford (Casey Affleck, GONE BABY GONE)? Or was it Jesse James (Brad Pitt, BABEL)? You can, on occasion, have multiple main characters, but with this film the muddling of who was doing what to who and why got seriously confusing. I attributed this to the fact that half the time we were focused on Jesse and the other half on Robert. The problems this caused was a lack of consistent story flow and a lengthy film that could've easily held more interest if it would've focused on either one character or the other. Personally, I would've liked to have seen the film start near Jesse James' assassination and then lead us off on the life of Robert Ford afterward. But that portion of Ford's life is quickly skimmed over and we never get the true feeling for what he went through after being labeled "the coward who shot Jesse James in the back." I also have to comment on the repetitive use of time-lapse photography during scenes meant to show the passage of time. The constant showing of clouds skidding rapidly across the sky got a bit tiring; time after time after time after time.
Regardless of title and movie length, and the lack of a consistent character, the acting was pretty much perfect. Brad Pitt played the confused, dangerous, paranoid, and nearly psychotic Jesse James exceptionally well. And Casey Affleck as the disenchanted Jesse James fan-boy came across as creepy and not-just-a-bit pathetic.
Although this film received plenty of praise (including two Oscar nominations), I found it to be slow and the first hour confusing with regards to understanding which character was doing what and why.
But the acting saved it for me. Although I wouldn't necessarily recommend this flick for those who are ready to head off to bed (as this might put them to sleep before bedtime), I would suggest it as a good character study of the times surrounding the life of Jesse James and the poor sap who shot him.