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Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Binding: DVD
EAN: 7321900763738
Format: PAL
Label: Warner Home Video
Languages: EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal Language
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 2
Release Date: March 31, 2008
Running Time: 155 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk:
Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a back-shooting crony.
The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper, was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise. Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerising in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a well nigh-novelistic back-story for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie western The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.
Still, the real co-star is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson




Rating: - Ponderous
There are several adjectives that describe this film, and ponderous is the first that came to my mind after watching it. The second was pretentious. Whilst Brad Pitt gives a creditable performance other actors are wooden and wholly unconvincing. The film could quite easily have been edited down from two and a half gruelling hours to a more tolerable 90 minutes without losing a word of dialogue or even any of the "moody" shots that supposedly lend it its contrived atmosphere. Other relevant adjectives: ... Read More

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Rating: - Absolute Rubbish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Boring, immaterial, twaddle, absolutely boring! Everyone knows the story! Nothing new poorly presented, bad acting! Can Amazon please add the option of giving it half a star rating 8)

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Rating: - The closer to Caesar the greater the danger
I am biased. I like Westerns more than any other type of film. Cant get enough of them. It drives my family mad. But it is an innocent hobby and I have not had to seek therapy yet. So has this time watching hours and hours of Westerns since I was a small child been of the tiniest use. Well I like to think so. In my modest way I feel I am actually qualified to give an informed opinion on them now. Which brings me to this film. Is it a good Western. Well yes I think it is. Certainly the best for a long time. ... Read More

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Rating: - Mixed feelings
One of those DVD's requiring that one must be "in the mood for history" to enjoy it. Not entertaining, yet compelling with a sad and unexpected ending. However, it conveys a sinister, but realistic dimension of Americanism => the power of sensasionalist press coverage and how easily American public perception is swayed by reporting. Tragically, it seems that following his death, no-one cared that James had been a cold-blooded criminal => instead Ford was turned into an outcast! One wonders how history (as dictated ... Read More

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Rating: - BORING!!!!
Okay i admit it, i only saw the first hour and that is the first time that i walked out of a cinema before the end of the film, i felt like asking for my money back.

It was the most boring hour of my life, even the train robbery was dull.

I was hoping for a western as engaing as Unforgiven or Dances with wolves, but nothing about this film held my interest, boring characters, a slow story and such a dreary look.

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