The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford

The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James reeks of the haunt­ing inevitabil­i­ty of death, in which the end­ing carved into the title hangs over the entire­ty, not mor­bid­ly but thrilling­ly, dar­ing you to invest in the hero.

Like Beowulf, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) is laden in skins and heavy with sin, tra­vers­ing the out­back, seek­ing res­o­lu­tion or ret­ri­bu­tion. Like Odysseus, he leaves his wife and chil­dren in a quest – the reper­cus­sion of his crim­i­nal actions – but always dreams of home. To find peace. To die.

Greek too, this is a film that exclu­sive­ly pri­ori­tis­es men: how men love, relate to and betray each oth­er. The polit­i­cal machi­na­tions of pow­er and trust are as com­plex between The James Gang, the ​‘bot­tom feed­ers’, as in Caligula’s court.

Con­ven­tion­al­ly speak­ing, the film is too long, too slow and has end­less codas. It draws an obvi­ous par­al­lel between Jesse James and the cult of con­tem­po­rary celebri­ty. As the first Amer­i­can idol he has the dan­ger­ous fan (Casey Affleck’s Robert Ford), his entourage, his press, his mythol­o­gy, but in many ways this is the film’s least inter­est­ing aspect.

What is com­plete­ly com­pelling about this depic­tion of James and his men in their final throes, their last rob­bery, their dis­in­te­gra­tion, is the depic­tion of male vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, co-depen­dence and inter­ac­tion. This is the best port­fo­lio of char­ac­ter stud­ies in years, nei­ther pseu­do or sen­si­tive, the result of superb direc­tion through­out from Andrew Dominik.

The gang kick off dis­cussing ​‘cunts’ over ​‘chaw’ (“And the stew needs noo­dles,” adds James). And the frank bru­tal­i­ty, frank real­i­ty con­tin­ues when they shoot and gnaw at each oth­er. But the machis­mo is always off­set by thought, emo­tion, con­science, aes­thet­ic con­text and query. Robert Ford’s grow­ing aware­ness that his hero is a flawed and real man holds a mir­ror up to James for all of us. Casey Affleck almost steals the film from Pitt who just man­ages to super­sede his own celebri­ty and convince.

One could be accused here of sim­ply falling for beau­ty, so stylised is the film’s sur­face. Pitt and Affleck are so mes­meris­ing phys­i­cal­ly that it could be one long super­fi­cial seduc­tion. Except you can feel the rough corn tips scuff­ing your fin­gers and you reel as Pitt sev­ers snakes heads, beats a boy and Affleck shoots grown men stone dead.

And it is pre­cise­ly this com­bi­na­tion of style and con­tent that shines – along­side the con­fi­dence to let this film be what it is; an opus, an epic and not a crowd pleaser.