The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. When Andrew Dominik created his screenplay from Ron Hansen's novel of the same name, it appears he tried to match the flavor of the film with the title of the book. Bloated, awkward, pretentious and meandering.
If you have been so sheltered that you have never heard of Jesse James, I will summarize his life in a nutshell. He was a ruthless killer and thief who became an American icon for his exploits. Why Jesse James (who could shoot a man in the back) would be considered a hero, while his killer was viewed as a coward, seems like a paradox to me. But such is life. I guess it all comes down to marketing. This incarnation of the Jesse James story takes a cerebral, psychological look at the man and his acquaintances.
TAOJJBTCRF(for short), begins with Jesse and Frank's last train job. Most of their original crew has been killed or arrested. Using some distant family members and several local men, the brothers rob a train that was supposed to be loaded with much more money. After the job, Jesse tries to blend back into a sense of normalcy under an assumed name. But his fear of Pinkerton's men, police and his own associates has put him on edge. This suspicion creates the rare tension that is interspersed with long droughts of poor pacing. The dialogue was rich, but sometimes difficult to understand. The characters seemed one-dimensional.
The worst dialogue came from Casey Affleck, who played Robert Ford. Affleck is difficult to understand, and I just didn't care for him. The film was already boring enough without him causing me to further lose interest. This was probably one of Pitt's (Jesse James) worst films. While Pitt wasn't bad, the role wasted his talent. The cast did not have much to work with here.
TAOJJBTCRF won't likely draw many younger viewers, who will quickly become bored anyway. The R rating could have been a PG-13 if the violence had been a little bit less graphic. There was enough blood and killing to push this one past the imaginary line the MPAA has drawn. There was some strong language and a few sexual references and situations, but not much in adult themes. The rating seemed most closely tied to the violence. Teenagers and above is a safe bet.
I wanted to like TAOJJBTCRF. The concept appealed to me, but the execution seemed overdone. The extensive stretches of slow pacing made the film feel tedious at times. While it was meant to examine the psychological aspects of the subject matter, it was simply too long and too slow. They could easily have done this film in under two hours, clipping forty minutes from the ridiculous run-time. In that amount of time, you might figure we would get extensive character development rather than stick figures. I was sorely disappointed. 4.5/10.
thanks to: @coldsteem. 
