People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.

Continuing my trip down Empire’s top 100 films of the century so far…

  • #84 - Coco
    Just a lovely, beautiful film!

Which brings me to the snappily titled The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.  Now, I'm not a huge fan of Westerns but, for some strange reason, I had started watching this one and given up on it reasonably quickly on grounds of dullness.  But, off I went again - to the end, this time!


And it's definitely still a Western - and I suspect I'd have given up on it again if I'd had any choice in the matter!  It's a beautifully shot film with some amazing scenery and some excellent performances to match.  Brad Pitt took a lot of the plaudits, but he didn't seem to have an awful lot to do for large portions of the film - whereas Casey Affleck did impress me and the supporting cast certainly hold their own in such lofty company.  And the story is quite interesting (and it was one I didn't know and it didn't go exactly where I was expecting), there are some impressive action scenes and the score backs up both the action and the scenery well - so what could I possibly have to object to?!?


Well, it's 160 minutes long (160 minutes!!) with Wikipedia noting that even Terence Malick (who likes to take his time over a tale) thought it was a tad overblown.  And I'm no Terence Malick but this film could quite easily have lost an hour and still been perfectly fine in terms of the plot.  Various critics also deemed the narration to be annoying - it didn't generally overly bother me, although there were times it stated the bleedin' obvious (which seemed a strange choice) or tells you what's about to happen (which just feels like the wrong choice).


One thing I did learn when reading up about this film was how successful Sam Shepard, who plays Frank James in this film, was as a playwright - he won a Pullitzer prize and the most Obie (Off Broadway) awards ever by anyone.  He was also an OK actor - being nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager, who coincidentally died this week - but barely appears in this film at all!  Maybe he dipped out when he heard how long it was - which is exactly what I wanted to do.  Not one I'll be revisiting, I'm afraid.






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