Is there really no thread on this yet? I thought this was one of the bigger releases. I’ll start, then (no spoilers):
I’m not sure how I feel about this movie. On the one hand, it’s wonderfully shot and has some great acting in it (Casey Affleck, who knew?), and I like the overall story. But boy is it sloooow. I’m not automatically turned off by slow movies, but this one is really slow. It seems like it’s deliberately paced that way, but it makes it hard for me to really recommend the movie wholeheartedly (especially since not only is it slow-paced, it’s nearly three hours long). I liked the structure of it, I liked how it was a movie about a bandit that really only has one brief scene of banditry, right at the beginning, and then goes on for the rest of the movie exploring people’s characters (very similar to 3:10 to Yuma in that respect). I guess I will say that it’s definitely a good movie, and I’d say it’s worth seeing and should be seen on the big screen, but I have serious reservations about the pacing and if someone told me they didn’t like it, I’d probably shrug and say “Yeah, I can see why.”
Saw this one last week and absolutely loved it. Brilliantly shot, trying to go for that natural light look but still doing some really beautiful stuff. Brilliantly acted as well, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, and Brad Pitt were all outstanding.
As for the pace, I thought it worked perfectly for the type of character-driven tragedy that this was. I’m not sure what I would take out to speed things up, I really do feel like the slow build up helps the film pay off (and naturally gets the characters to where they end up).
Definitely a strong recommend and one of the best films I’ve seen this year.
When I came out of the theatre after watching this movie, I wasn’t sure what to make of it either. I went in with really high expectations and came away feeling sort of disoriented by the whole thing. But I sat back and thought about this movie more and more and reflected on its structure. I mean, its basically a novel on film complete with narration and side plot digressions that seem bizarrely out of place at first but then add up to an immense conclusion.
I think that is what really did it for me, I kept turning the scenes with Ford AFTER he had killed James and thought about the strange power the movie was able to achieve despite being oddly distancing. I’d agree that its definitely a hard movie to recommend but one I wanted to see again soon after I saw it.
I saw this on Saturday and really liked it. I was worried about the pacing with such a long movie, but I found myself quickly sucked into it and then no longer being aware of the time after that. Just a really well put together flick all aorund.
However, the entire movie I was thinking, “The soundtrack to this sounds an awful lot like The Proposition,” and then right at that bar scene near the end, “Oh, hey, there’s Nick Cave.”
Heh, cool. I didn’t notice. The Proposition was pretty great, too. I don’t know if this counts as a western, but both of these movies get that feeling of isolation and contemplation down like I would expect from a great western. The foreshadowing via the headshot of James’ cousin was quite the touch. It really suggested to me that killing is something that you don’t really have in you; it’s something you teach yourself out of necessity. I’m glad the movie didn’t eventually paint Ford as a complete nutcase like I was afraid would happen in the first ten minutes. We don’t need more dehumanised characters to drive a plot.
Finally got around to seeing this (it’s been sitting next to my dvd player for weeks like so much Inland Empire), and it was an excellent Sunday afternoon movie. I really can’t think of much I disliked about the movie. It’s funny that the OP compares it to 3:10 to Yuma…this is exactly the kind of film I needed to erase that crime against humanity from my mind.
Thanks for the Nick Cave note, I did keep thinking I’d heard the soundtrack somewhere, and all sorts of recognition was occurring subconsciously during the guitarman scene. But really the only time I wasn’t into the movie enough to be able to step back and meta deconstruct it was when Mr. Crossfire was on screen, and even he was alright (just difficult to separate from his non actor persona, since he’s played himself in so many things).
I did not like 3:10 to Yuma or this. I thought the guy who played Robert Ford did a good job but that the rest of the movie was slow, boring…completely uninteresting.
Casey Affleck was great in this movie - miles better than Ben will ever be in any movie.
It is slow, and I’m not sure why they felt the need to imply that Jesse committed suicide, other than I guess they lionized him so much during the course of the movie that it otherwise seemed inexplicable that he’d do something so foolish like trusting the rubes how shot him.
Still, miles better than 3:10 to Yuma (the remake, at least), and definitely in my top 5 of 2007.
You felt they lionized him? I thought they did a good job of portraying his charisma without downplaying the fact that he was a psychopath. I was also confused by the suicide references, but they made sense within the movie’s established worldview rules, I guess. I expected a cliche about hubris instead, so it’s easy to see how difficult a question this is to answer in a satisfactory manner that matches the quality of the rest of the movie’s themes.
Overall, I was so impressed with the subtleties of the ending that it let me cut the movie some slack in retrospect. Slow, but not boring. Full of detail and nuance without ever being pointless. That’s it, I’m done with the ambiguous platitudes, I just had to get them out of my system.
It certainly made me more interested in the source material and at the same time very aware that most things written about the James brothers and Ford would be bullshit.
By “lionizing” I meant that he’s constantly portrayed as the smartest, most charismatic guy in the room (except maybe his brother Frank), who constantly talks circles around everyone and effortlessly interogates his crew - he’s not shown to be the nicest guy (although he’s shown to be a great family man, etc.) but he’s the most capable and competent. Even his otherwise charismatic adulterer buddy is clearly outgunned around him.
I guess I could see that, but as I said earlier I felt the movie did a good job of portraying what was apparently something of a mystical power over other people while wearing the flawed, psychotic nature underneath it. The one that drives him to beat a young boy out of his paranoia, the kind that drives him to be most and least comfortable in his schizophrenic home life, and ultimately the kind that gives his most bootlicking cronies no choice but to take him out.
He makes mistakes, and he does weird, sick things that make his end (unlike Frank’s) an almost too perfect summation.
Anyways, I guess I just took the movie as less flattering to Pitt’s character than I expected it to be. I thought it would be a lame Hollywood antihero treatment in that they dress him in black and throw in a few flaws but otherwise whitewash him into Robin Hood (the movie version).
Agree that they don’t try to make Jesse James some kind of mythical, noble Robin Hood-type character, unlike some of the earlier adaptations. He’s definitely shown to be paranoid and perhaps psychotic. It’s definitely a very interesting interpretation of the character, which ultimately paints him as self-destructive and almost purposeless.
Anyway, I really liked the movie, primarily for its characters and the quality of the performances. And, again, so much better than 3:10 to Yuma.
We just watched this the other night. Excellent film, though agreed about the pacing at times.
For a mainstream Hollywood flick, it really sticks very closely to actual history, too, which was pleasantly surprising. There was a pretty big omission (the Ford bros. were tried for James’s murder and sentenced to death, but the governor pardoned them), but the flow of events that was there was pretty close to historical accounts I’ve read.
3:10 to Yuma is sitting in my Netflix pile. Should I just send it back unwatched and get the two hours of my life back for something else?
Not sure if you’re asking me, but I’ll say it anyway. You can look at the Yuma thread and make your own call…I’m still amazed at how many positive reactions this film got. My summary: 3:10 to Yuma would have been the worst movie I’d seen all year if I’d seen it last year, and it’s likely to be the worst I’ll see this year. It joins Moulin Rouge in the category of films that I wish I could unsee.
