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List Price: $19.98Amazon.com's Price: $14.99 You Save: $4.99 (25%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PITT,BRAD
EAN: 0012569763739
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 05, 2008
Running Time: 160 minutes
Sales Rank: 980
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
No Description Available.
Genre: Westerns
Rating: R
Release Date: 5-FEB-2008
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com:
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 backshooting 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 (2000), 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 mesmerizing 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 wellnigh-novelistic backstory 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 costar 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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - While slow moving, this film is excellent.
This film caught me by surprise. The screenwriting is excellent, and Brad Pitt gives what may be his best performance ever as Jesse James in the sunset of his notorious career. The film is as much about morality as about a peculiar period in American history, a time of expansion westward which was conducted at great cost to many. I rather enjoyed the bleak yet realistically portrayed conditions of frontier town life and the typical period style shameless sideshow staged events that this movie profiles. ... Read More
Rating: - Western Art
Westerns are constantly being reinvented. Sometimes just adequately. But sometimes, as in the case of this film, they set the bar for a whole new level of enjoyment within the genre. And ironically, (much like a Sergio Leone film) it's being done by a Director who's not even American! You'd think that we Americans would know best how to make movies about our own history, as well as within a genre that all but defined early American cinema, but Dominik (Director of the Australian classic "Chopper") aced ... Read More
Rating:  - Movie: 4/5 Picture Quality: 3.5/5 Sound Quality: 3/5 Extras: 0.5/5
Version: U.S.A / Region A, B, C
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
VC-1 BD-25
Average video bit rate: 15.70 Mbps
Running time: 2:39:40
Movie size: 22,41 GB
Disc size: 23,94 GB
DD AC3 5.1 640Kbps English / French / Spanish
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
#Documentary - The Assassination of Jesse James: Death of an Outlaw (SD - 32 minutes)
Rating: - You have to watch it twice...
I would like to say that I "hated" this movie or that it "was great." But neither is true. To get it, you must watch it twice. Because the movie works with underlayments of psychological interaction, you pick up much more the second time.
Don't be discouraged by the meandering beginning, which throws you into a cast of at-first-undistinguishable secondary characters. You know Brad Pitt is Jesse James and that Casey Affleck is Robert Ford, but the poor choice of throwing a bunch of other at ... Read More
Rating: - Dull at a first glance amazing at a second
When I began to watch this film I for the most part agreed with the negative reviews on this site. It wasn't exciting, the dialog was simple, and most of all: it moved very, very slow.
The first thirty minutes were not enjoyable because I didn't know the characters, scenes seemed random, or pointless. But ultimately this film builds like a crescendo into a stirring masterpiece.
160 minutes, but as I look back, none were wasted. The characters are flawlessly developed, and I really can ... Read More
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