Location: Home > DVD > All Action & Adventure > The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [2007]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [2007]

Director: Andrew Dominik
Actors: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-louise Parker, Sam Rockwell, Brooklynn Proulx
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD

List Price: ~~Ł20.99~~
Buy New: Ł5.98
You Save: Ł15.01 (72%)

New (13) Used (10) from Ł3.97

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

77 reviews
Sales Rank: 212

Format: Pal
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 155
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6

EAN: 7321900763738
ASIN: B000Y8G0OS

Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 31, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New & Sealed, Shipped From The UK

Similar Items:

•	3:10 To Yuma [2007]
•	Michael Clayton [2007]
•	No Country For Old Men [2008]
•	There Will Be Blood (2 disc Special Edition) [2007]
•	Rendition [2007]

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.co.uk
Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a back-shooting crony.
The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper, was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise. Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerising in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a well nigh-novelistic back-story for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie western The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.
Still, the real co-star is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews: Read 72 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing August 28, 2008
Maybe I was expecting too much after the rave reviews.

But I did not enjoy this film.

This is mainly because there are no characters that you can really warm to, so you don't really care when anything happens to them!

Having said that, the direction and acting are extremely good...

4 out of 5 stars

Fantastic acting around every corner, also very well written. August 27, 2008
In this review I'm not going to bother saying the ridiculously long title this film has claimed, instead i'll just use AOJJ, it's easier to type down. AOJJ is a fascinating look at the end of Jesse James's life. It drags on for too long but it's stuffed with great acting, and emotional writing.
Casey Afflek's performance here is one of the most memorable performances you'll ever find in a drama as Robert Ford, the nobody who eventually kills Jesse James. This isn't exactly a spoiler because it says it all in the title unfortunately. Bradd Pitt also seems experienced and effective in this as Jesse James himself, but his performance is overshadowed by the brilliant Casey Afflek.
The photography in this film is also impressive, I'm not sure what it is, the scenery isn't exactly the most beautiful you'll see in a film, but the way it's been shot and how they've tweaked the colors is very impressive.

My downsides to this movie:
It's much too long, and the whole plot is ruined by the absurd title, as well as that there is too much dialog, even if it is very well written and things don't really build up until the end. Still highly recommended though, if you're a film fanatic like me.

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent film August 27, 2008
This films is very realistic and believable. The acting and cinematography are first rate. Highly recommended.

3 out of 5 stars

Long But Worthwhile August 12, 2008
This movie does go on for a rather long time.
However, the photography, acting and music are all of high quality and the time flies in. Casey Affleck captures the weasel-like, almost stalker, Bob Ford in a very convincing way.Brad Pitt has a more understated performance as Jesse James and plays him just like a regular guy most of the time though his menace seems to be bubbling just under the surface.
Sam Rockwell is also truly outstanding as Charlie Ford, what an outstanding and underrated actor he is.Utterly convincing on screen.
Some of the 'Old West' dialogue is cranky and a little hard to follow at times, though that is a small criticism.
Sure, it's not a masterpiece but very much worth the watching.
Recommended.

4 out of 5 stars

Fine revisionist Western (8/10) August 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' is a thoughtful and atmospheric film about the American outlaw myth. A careful and occasionally brutal revisionist western in the mould of Clint Eastwood's masterpiece 'Unforgiven [1992]', Andrew ('Chopper') Dominik's epic has been crafted with a painstaking, sometimes self-consciously meticulous eye. Like Eastwood's Oscar winner, 'The Assassination ...' aims to debunk some of the Western's myths, from the notional romantic hero of the train robber, to the casual violence that characterised the genre. The violence in this film is bloodily visceral, erupting from a deeply inhospitable landscape populated by dirty, sickly and paranoid men.

The edge of realism is offset by the striking and often impressionistic realising of the bleak American landscape. There are no triumphant gallops through Monument Valley, just pneumonia-inducing frozen hillsides. In a way, the director's great care in rendering his characters so emotionally and physically numb - enhanced by a liberal use of longeur - make it a pretty chilly film to watch. 'The Assassination of Jesse James' is an engaging work nonetheless, although the slightly verbose voiceover - probably culled directly from Ron Hansen's book of the same name - is clunky and portentious. Often describing things that can be easily deduced on screen, its po-faced superfluousness rather jars. Nevertheless, Brad Pitt's menacing take on Jesse James - akin to that of paranoid mob boss who rules with fear - sustains a creeping tension that fuels this slow-paced movie. His paranoia is portrayed as a kind of contagious infection that slowly kills off his gang following their final heist, insinuating itself between friends and brothers. Casey Affleck is particularly good as the effeminate and sycophantic Robert Ford, who has idolised the Jesse James myth since boyhood and latches himself onto the James gang like a besotted groupie. However, Jesse grooms his admirer into his own assassin, forseeing and securing his own mythical status in the process.

One other minor quibble I have in a film that is otherwise so stylistically careful, is the lazy use of sped-up cloud formations - a cinematic technique so cliched now it should only be used in parody. Otherwise there is much to admire about 'The Assassination of Jesse James' even if it's difficult to invest emotionally in such a bleak assessment of human nature. The film's mood sits readily next to Paul Thomas Anderson's operatic 'There Will Be Blood (2 disc Special Edition) [2007]': both films suggesting that the myths at the heart of the American dream - its outlaw heros, its oil prospectors, for example - are soaked in blood and barbarism.