Incredible, breathtaking.

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2008)

Total Film gave it five stars, calling it "a masterpiece". Empire: the same, whilst commenting on how "extraordinary and visionary" it is. And The Daily Telegraph say is it "magnificent, one of the year's best". The bar has been set high for humble reviewer such as myself to write something different and worthy of reading.
Where to start is a hard task. The cinematography is on such a level of extraordinary exquisiteness and diversity that it deserves its own review by itself. Beautifully shot, the film travels along old dusty roads, smoke filled towns, solitary rail roads with engulfing steam and the endlessly stretching hillsides of the old West which alternate in their splendour from snow covered to fruitful. The violence, although tame and sparse throughout the two and half hour run time, is unforgiving in its depiction and the dialogue, of both the actors and the omnipresent voice-over, is beautiful, poetic and lyrical ("insomnia stained his eyes like soot") and weaves a story so detached from Hollywood, you'd have trouble believing this was indeed of the American cinematic machinery.
As for the acting. Well, wow. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck take the eponymous title roles respectively. The young, stammering Ford, who is all nerves around his idol, holds a sinister look in his eyes and when he says he knows he is fated to do great things the tone of the film is reset time and again, growing darker and more edgy as the titular event draws nearer. Pitt, in possibly his finest role since "Fight Club" or "Twelve Monkeys", is absolutely fantastic but no amount of praise could truly capture how well he embodies a man fallen from the top of his game, knowing where his enemies are, to the untrusting, suspecting paranoid wreck he eventually becomes.
Despite the title of the film, the build up to James' death is still tense through out. And when it does happen, a wave of hatred and depression hits the viewer at how coldly and cowardly it is done. Pitt's performance not only draws out our sympathy with a scalpel with the depiction of a man broken but Ford's cowardice helps to do nothing but exaggerate it. The man who dies is not just Brad Pitt: The Actor, but moreover Brad Pitt: Jesse James mark II.
Everything about this film is perfect. Those that do hack it out can rejoice, however, in having just witnessed one of the greatest films of the year and one which will no doubt live on for years and become an undisputed classic.
Read the full review and more at www.wrawreviews.co.uk