Slow and ponderous and misses the real story

Rating: 4/10 (30 September 2007)

If you want to impress, make it slow and ponderous and full of meaning. But if it is slow and ponderous and has little meaning, then you will only impress those who find slow and ponderous more impressive than a little meaning.
This movie has a story that up and until the killing could be told in twenty minutes without losing any meaning. The fact that Jesse James was a horrible deranged man, who went around the countryside in his last years killing his accomplices and robbing no banks or trains is not particularly interesting.
The only really interesting story is that of the killer who then went on to recreate the killing on stage for the delectation of American audiences several hundred times, but who was then despised and murdered for having killed a folk hero. It illustrated again America's predilection for making "heroes" of villains because they are celebrities, and despising those who deal with the "heroes". Sensational was that the senseless killer of the killer was pardoned because of public support.
And all this, the truly interesting part of the story, is flashed through with little analysis after several hours of plodding through the snow on horseback and sitting around a table staring at each other and laughing manically in yet another dirty shack.
As to acting, Brad Pitt makes a convincing deranged nasty man but repeats the same performance in dozens of scenes with little variation. As does Casey Affleck, who plays, very well, the same squeaking dim adolescent in scene after scene and fails to convince that the naive hero worshipper could be turned into the deadly killer.