Icon worshiping can be a dangerous obsession. If you ever get to know your idol on a personal level like the insecure antagonist in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, you’d realize that they are very different from the storybook character that you grew up with and believed they were.
At a time when the infamous Jesse Brothers gang is reduced to the two brothers, they recruit people, for a train robbery. The younger brother of one of the new members gets very close to Jesse; so close, in fact, that Jesse asks him to stay over for the night while the rest are leaving. And it doesn’t seem like it’s for moving the furniture, as the film suggests. The boy is around twenty years old. He wants to be like Jesse.
Casey Affleck as Robert Ford looks and behaves like a nervous, psychotic rat, and the bad vibrations that he exudes come right out of the screen to make you feel uneasy at all times. There’s something radically wrong with his character. The film claims that he has the aim of a master gunman; sharper by a mile, in fact, than Jesse’s gunmen. If so, why does Robert keep on yapping to try to convince people; why can’t he simple shoot with his gun instead of his tongue? And seriously, why does he need to work for Jesse; Jesse ought to have been working for him.
It’s difficult to say how well Brad Pitt has fit into the shoes of Jesse James, since I haven’t read the book or delved into the characteristics of the outlaw. But judging from the old photographs, I’d say it’s improbable that he was as cheerful as the actor is. Jesse, who knew he had a heavy ransom on his head, would surely not have trusted too many people. So, the funny thing is this: if even the audience can tell there’s something odd about the would-be-assassin, how come Jesse can’t sense it? There can be only one explanation: Casey Affleck overacts.
The rationed action scenes are pathetic: poor folks being robbed, a kid being roughed up, and professional gunmen shooting at each other from a three-meter distance and missing their respective targets. The music sets the mood for the impending doom. And the canvas is brilliantly lit. But the pace drags so badly that you wish from the very start that someone assassinates this guy and gets the bloody thing over with.
Andrew Dominik’s outlaw biopic essentially explores the mind of the two historical characters, the legendary outlaw, and an infatuated young fan who aspires to be like his model and only wishes that the others in the gang (terribly inferior gunmen though they be!) treat him with a little respect.
