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Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Ben and I watched the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford over the weekend. Or rather we watched half of it and I finished it up on Tuesday while I was dusting. It seems by all of the reviews that I've read of the movie that most people love it, but others absolutely hated it. I found myself in between and consider it a mediocre movie that could have been great with better editing.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford tells the story of the end of Jesse James' life. From his introduction to Bob Ford, to his last train robbery, to his paranoia, it is a great portrait of Jesse James and Brad Pitt did a fantastic job. Casey Affleck also did a great job playing Robert Ford as a very young man who has hero worship for Jesse James, but yet fears for his own life through Jesse's paranoia.

The acting was fantastic, the cinematography was beautiful, and I loved the voice over story telling. What I didn't like was that the movie seemed to drag on endlessly. I found myself just wanting Jesse to be shot! The movie was 2.5 hours long and really should have been two hours or less. I think they really should have taken out a lot of the material from the first half of the movie. There were a lot of pointless scenes that didn't help much with character development or scenes that went too long.

If you only have time for one of the westerns that came out last fall, I recommend 3:10 to Yuma rather than this movie.

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