The Assassination of Jesse James

SPOILERS FOR TEN YEAR OLD MOVIE












The James family has said that this is the most historically accurate portrayal of Jesse James ever made. You gotta wonder what went through his mind when he read the paper of the Liddel confession. It seemed like he gave up and accepted like
He had been betrayed. He took off his guns and randomly decided to dust the picture. Affleck knocked it out of the park showing his angst when killing him. With that said frick Robert Ford!

They were very faithful to the known historical account(s), from what I've read. From sets, to clothes, to dialogue, etc...

Actual real life accounts can be boring and a western one like this normally needs a some Hollywood Wyatt Earp embellishment for entertainment purposes, but it doesn't.

Think of it as an History channel re-enactment doc on Hollywood steroids.

It's the truest definition of a great slow burn. Casey Affleck is the primo IMO.

"He was growing into middle age and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. He installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in the evenings as his wife wiped her pink hands on an apron and reported happily on their two children. His children knew his legs, the sting of his mustache against their cheeks, they didn't know how their father made his living or why they so often moved. They didn't even know their father's name..."

"Don't that picture look dusty..."

"'Go on. Go on now. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa...whoa...'

'You ever considered suicide?'

'Can't say that I have. They was always something else I wanted to do. Or predicaments change...or I saw my hardships from a different slant. You know all what can happen. It never seemed respectable.'

'I tell you one thing that's for sure. You don't mind dying once you peeked over to the other side. You no more wanna go back to your own body than you wanna spoon up your own puke.'"

"'He had no real memory of the shooting and its aftermath. He could remember lifting the gun that Jesse had given him. And then it was Good Friday, and he was reading about the funeral proceedings as if they'd happened a long time ago.'

'Why did you kill him.'

'Well, he was gonna kill me.'

'So you were scared and that was the only reason.'

'Yep. I don't know why.'

'Do you want me to change the subject?'

'You know what I expected? Applause. I was only twenty years old then. You could see how that would look to people. I was surprised by that. They didn't applaud...'"

It's a beautiful., incredible film. Some of the best writing of any movie in this century and probably one of the best ten or so movies of this century, at a minimum.

It got washed up with the rest of the 2007 Westerns and its message didn't really resonate with a large audience then. It was, instead, incredibly prescient in its haunting messages about fame, ideology, loneliness, paranoia, and disillusionment. It was definitely ahead of its time, in a way.

I have a lot of friends from Europe, East Asia, and South Asia here in Chicago. I always tell them that you cannot truly understand the U.S. if you don't really understand the Civil War and its aftermath. The legend of Jesse James is a fairly critical part of understanding that story - the why, the how, the reality, the geography.

I need to watch this again. Love everyone in it but I had a hard time getting through it. Seemed to really drag.

One of my favorites and one of the most underrated.

That whole exchange about the Indian women at the beginning had me hooked.

ETA:

I remember this getting mixed reviews. People want so much CGI explosions, that they can't enjoy a great story.

I’ve said this in many threads before, but it’s worth saying again....

This is the most criminally underrated movie of all time, and I can’t even think of something in the same stratosphere.

This movie is so beautiful, and so perfect. The score and cinematography were amazing.