Pretty to look at, very intense from time to time, but also very slow

Rating: Null/10 (3 October 2019)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, which in turn is based on real events that took place in the late 1800s. The West is slowly dying out, giving room for modern era of industrialization and globalism. And one of the last great folk heroes of that era was the train robber Jesse James. This is the story of his demise. As you might have surmised from the title.
Directed by Andrew Dominik, with Roger Deakins as the cinematographer, it's certainly a very pretty film. The West is brought in front of your eyes in all of its empty glory. With its vast fields, its endless space, with the distant sun painting everything in shades of dust and wheat. The camera work and lighting are also spectacular, especially in the opening train robbing scene. If you like westerns at all, you should definitely see this film for the visuals alone.
The acting is also very good. Casey Affleck as Robert Ford, the main character, has that smarmy quality to him. You can instantly see that this guy is faking his bravado, putting on airs, trying to fill shoes that are way too big. But he thinks he's pulling it off, and is so annoyingly smug about it. This is a guy you wanna slap on general principle. Which makes it all the more interesting when the movie starts to work at making him sympathetic.
But real top notch acting in this movie is done by Brad Pitt as Jesse James. I would have liked to see more of this character. Now you get the sense that people believe he's a myth, a legend. A man that quiets the room simply by walking in. Because he's that dangerous. You can see it, but you don't quite have time to believe it yourself, because we don't spend enough time with him. Pitt convinces us by his acting, but it's not enough to really sink in. Yet at the same time the movie talks about him a lot. About how he was larger than life and a feature of American cultural consciousness at that time. And how much his death shook people. You hear about it, but you don't believe it because so much time is spent with Ford.
Which might make it seem baffling when I say that this film is a slow one. Because if it's a slow and long one, where was the not-Ford time spent if not on Jesse? Well, on landscapes, Ford's relatives, more landscapes, interior shots, landscapes... Things like that. And it looks pretty. It looks real pretty. But perhaps they could have cut a few of the establishing landscape shots and focused more on Jesse's status as a legend. Might have made Ford's eventual fate more coherent for us. Because there's a reason the title of the film paints Ford as a coward. It demeans him for killing a train robber. Think about that.
Still, the film has its merits. Definitely a film I will remember, for the imagery alone if nothing else. It has its flaws as well, being far from perfect, but nevertheless I'd say it's worth a watch.