Simply OK, not great. I wouldn't re-watch it.

Rating: 5/10 (7 October 2008)

Yes, the cinematography is beautiful. Although the camera 'view through glass' shot is used a bit too often as to render the effect redundant. There are lots of sepia tones and sickly greys. The set design is very nice. This isn't a prettied up old west and the people and places often look run-down and in need of some t.l.c. The dialog is quite often, very poetic. I'm not sure if some of it is lifted straight from the novel?
J.J - "No. I haven't been acting correctly. I can't hardly recognize myself sometimes when I'm greased. I go on journeys out of my body and look at my red hands and my mean face and I wonder about that man who's gone so wrong. I've been becoming a problem to myself."
The acting is good but not especially great. Affleck does a good job of the tremulous voiced, duplicitous boot-lick Robert Ford character. A man who craves some kind of celebrity even though there's is nothing particularly special about him; he has no special talents per se, aside from collecting trivia about Jesse James and trying to convince himself and others that he is cut from the same cloth as a man like J.J. Pitt is OK, but his J.J is laconic to say the least. Often, scenes that are meant to hint at the darkness and turmoil lurking beneath his calm and composed exterior simply come off as being a little... baffling (the snakes and the fish in the ice scene. Some kind of animal symbolism intended there? I'm not sure). Even when he goes all giddy and get's excited at the prospect of imminent violence, I felt that it was the same kind of acting I'd seen Pitt do a better job of elsewhere. Lastly, the various plot threads concerning the ex-members of the James gang, and J.J's various beefs with each of them, are hard to keep track of. Suffice to say, the intention is to illustrate how J.J has just gone off the deep end at the end of his 'career' and doesn't seem to trust anyone anymore. In that sense, perhaps the adaptation is a little too greedy with how much it tries to pack into the film. Less probably would've been more. The narration is at times intrusive and, especially at the end, tends to subtract from the overall experience of being immersed in the films world. Like an unwanted tap on the shoulder from a friend who's already seen the film and is trying to make sure that you're in the loop, it's more distracting than anything. The music - Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. I loved the score they did for The Proposition but, at around 150mins, it feels like they have underwritten for the film or maybe just written the score in a hurry. We get 2 or 3 themes played repeatedly over and over and this has the unfortunate effect of making the film seem longer than it is by virtue of there being the same pieces of music used for multiple scenes. Cave has a cameo at the very end, playing a song on an acoustic guitar in a pub. Overall, it doesn't even come close to being a great modern Western. Just my opinion. I could re-watch 'Unforgiven' and 'Tombstone' many times over, but 'The Assassinatination of Jesse James' is, ultimately, a once was enough for me film.