Jeffrey Overstreet

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

A while back, maybe a year or two, I saw some photographs in the newspaper that revealed a new wax likeness of Brad Pitt for the famous Madame Tussaud's museum.

My how far he's come. It seems like only yesterday that a feisty actor with a roguish grin showed up in Thelma and Louise, and then earned comparisons to the young Robert Redford in A River Runs Through It. Since then, Pitt has blazed his own trail through Hollywood history and become an uber-icon. His personal choices have thrown fuel on the fire of his celebrity, so that it has become almost impossible to discuss his movies without being sidetracked with talk about his tabloid coverage.

You could almost swear that it isn't Brad Pitt we're watching in Andrew Dominick’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It seems more like we're watching the wax statue. It's as though Pitt's journey into legendary status has hardened him, caused him to flee from his sex-symbol status. In 2006's Babel, he seemed determined to show us the deepening lines around his eyes and the bruises and regrets within them. And here, his laughter -- once playful and charismatic laugh -- is bitter and sneering. It's as if the Legend of Brad Pitt has caused the actor to retreat from his own skin, burrowing inward. Weary of what people believe him to be, or want him to be, he leaves us with an enigma: the familiar shell, minus the youthful spirit.

This is, of course, all speculation. But it may have something to do with why Brad Pitt is the perfect choice to play Jesse James in this film. He has exactly what the role demands. I don't know, really, whether to praise this as the peak of his career as an actor (which has included some very fine performances indeed), or if it's really just Pitt being himself and letting us consider the connections between himself and that other American legend whose reputation became too big to bear.

Whatever the case, Pitt's presence is both a distraction and a benefit to the movie. We can't avoid considering the baggage he brings to the movie. But we also cannot deny how he imbues long, quiet, meditative scenes with drama and menace. There's a subterranean intelligence behind that poker face. His restraint teases us into asking questions about the character. That's good acting.

In fact, every aspect of this film invites us to think things through, rather than merely basking in the entertainment. Watching Assassination feels like reading a detailed novel about the Old West. That's because it's adapted from a novel by Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy. Most big-screen adaptations are reinventions, only very loosely based on some ideas from a text. Assassination makes us feel as if we're turning the pages of a weighty hardbound volume illustrated by cinematographer Roger Deakins' vivid imagery. Each picture lingers, letting us examine the faces of the cast, the subtleties in their expressions, and the exquisite details of their costumes and locations.

Read more

by Jeffrey Overstreet