The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Review

Overall Rating

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the greatest film of 2007. The ensemble acting is spot on, with Brad Pitt doing surprisingly effective, complex work, his best by far since Twelve Monkeys, and the better performance of the two. Sam Rockwell is excellent as always. Casey Affleck deserves all the notice he recieved, though in my opinion he really is the lead actor despite being labelled as supporting. Roger Deakin's cinematography is the best he's ever done, and that's really saying something, considering the brilliance of his work in general. Every shot in this film is perfectly composed, from the framing to the lighting to the angles. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis's score is, like that of The Proposition, beautiful and subtle, and Cave has an awesome cameo singing in a bar. Many people may find this film to be very slow and perhaps boring at times. I didn't. My one complaint is that the narration, while useful at the beginning and end of the film, is too prevalent. I would have liked to see a lot of the things it described, particularly more of Jesse's mental deterioration. On the other hand, sometimes the narration described things that were being shown on screen, making it unnecessary. Still, this didn't bother me enough to stop me from loving the movie. I recommend it for people who don't mind a slow-moving film that seeks more to enlighten than to entertain. If you really give it your time and attention, you will be rewarded.