Reviewing Movies

Watched this movie again the other night for at least the forth time. It’s not hard to cheer for someone who gave banks and land-grabbing railway speculators a hard time. As portrayed here it would seem even Pinkerton, the man hired to capture Jesse James, admired him. Pinkerton had lots of company as the James-Younger gang walked the streets of their home town with impunity.

A reading of T. J. Styles’ biography of Jesse James would lead one to decide that the creators of this movie took the usual Hollywood liberties with the facts. I’ll not dwell on details here; the appeal of this movie is the camaraderie and by-play between the characters in this story. The steady, Shakespeare-quoting Frank and the charismatic wiseacre Jesse, Colin Farrell seems type-cast to play. Heck, they almost make bank robbing look like fun.

With the exception of Jim Younger very few people we care about actually get killed here. It’s hard to believe that with the amount of lead flying here so few people actually get hurt. In many ways this is a horse opera where whipping your horse in a chase scene predated putting the pedal to the metal. With the exception of the long-suffering Zee we don’t see the people who waited and worried back home, the nights spent hiding in the bush in the rain, the cold meals in a hastily assembled hide-out. And we get a Hollywood ending.