The Assassination of Jesse James Review

Do me a favor and watch this trailer for the film in question. Looks great, right? At the 1:00 mark, a jangling, fast-paced guitar song starts, and at 1:58, it hits you with a full fledged Things Spiraling Out of Control Montage. Who wouldn't be excited about that film?

Well, it takes about an hour and a half into The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Esquire A.S.C. to even approach something like the energy of that trailer, and it's hard pressed to maintain it for more than a few minutes at a time. It's simply too long, and I suppose that my pleasure in making jokes at the expense of the elongated title should have clued me in.

And it's ultimately frustrating, because the rest of the film is outstanding: Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt both excellently play two different types of crazy, my man Sam Rockwell breezes his way into paranoid madness (plus he gets "and Sam Rockwell" style credit recognition. Damn straight), and even James Carville joins a cast of character actors as various outlaws. Only Mary Louise Parker goes to waste in a bit part as Jesse James' wife- even her line in the trailer gets cut. It's astounding that this movie has any deleted scenes.

The problem is that unlike the similarly long American Gangster, this film has a simple plot: Affleck and Rockwell play young brothers recruited to run heists with Brad Pitt's psychopathic Jesse James. Affleck eventually shoots him in the back, due to circumstance, delusions of grandeur, and an intense affection that turns to something like hatred for the outlaw.

There are plenty of not terribly necessary subplots to pass the time, as well as a narrator who occasionally helps out with historical fact, but sometimes plods the film down by explaining character motivations. But it's mostly just smoky western landscapes and people staring at one another- it's very beautifully shot and composed, but it takes too long to mean anything.

A big misstep is assuming that the audience will like Pitt in the film as much as they do in real life, and in something that coasts on charisma like the Ocean's Eleven series you can get away with that. But despite playing nice with his family, he's nothing but a killer and a madman, and the story and the camera linger on him longer than they should.

Ironically, the story moves quickly and becomes much more compelling after the titular assassination happens, as it examines the way America makes legends of bad, bad people, and the fleeting nature of Robert Ford's fame for shooting that legend. It's the opposite problem that Nicole and I had with Lust, Caution- that movie was dramatic enough in the early going, but all built up to nothing. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is too plodding before it reaches a dramatic finale.

It's all the more frustrating that this movie was just okay, because with a half decent editing job it could be transcendent.

When to See It: On DVD

Obscurity Hall of Fame: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Often I find myself asked whom I would like to play me in a movie. This is not because I likely to become the subject of a biopic, but because these are the sorts of things my friends and I talk about- in any case my answer is always the same: Sam Rockwell.

We don't look that much alike, other than both being white guys with brown hair and a tendency to smirk. And yes, I am aware that I am not yet twenty four, while Sam just turned thirty nine (on Guy Fawkes' Day). I don't care, he's that awesome. When the time comes we'll use CGI to do it: he's my man.

He can certainly embody my spirit, if he can successfully turn himself into the man that ruined modern television and claims to have assassinated 33 people for the CIA in the mid seventies. Which brings me to my next inductee into the Obscurity Hall of Fame: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Based on the "unauthorized autobiography" that Barris wrote in 1984, it was George Clooney's directorial debut, and one of my favorite films. I didn't realize until after I bought the DVD that it was also written by Charlie Kaufman (!)- there were reports of Clooney irking my favorite screenwriter by shutting him out of the film making process. If I had known that beforehand, it may have tempered my love for Confessions based on my admiration for Kaufman's style, but it turned out great, either way.

Barris, for us dang young whippersnappers, is the creator of countless early exploitative game shows like "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game," low-culture icons that arugably led to modern day things like Jerry Springer and "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila." But he's most famous for two seasons as the host of "The Gong Show," the grandfather of the first couple weeks on "American Idol" where they boot off rejects and losers.

In Confessions, he's a man constantly concerned with his degrading legacy, afraid of commitment to girlfriend Drew Barrymore, and drawn into the CIA by something dark within him (as well as Clooney's mustachioed CIA recruiter). The cast is rounded out by a brief Maggie Gyllenhaal appearance, and a grossly miscast Julia Roberts as a "sultry" fellow assassin, obviously doing Clooney a favor.

But it's Rockwell who steals the show by nailing Barris's manic energy as a rung-climber at NBC and as a TV host, and somehow manages to play both crass game shows and botched killings for some bitingly dark humor. The film is interspersed with documentary-style interviews of real life colleagues like Dick Clark and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and leaves you to decide whether or not Barris made up the whole CIA bit. (Barris consulted and visited the set, but Clooney and company made it a point to never ask him about it.)

The style of the film is a mixed bag of seventies throwback fun, with hippie music, all in-camera special effects, and a dark color palette that makes it feel like something much older. The disparate plot elements don't really sound like they would fit together, and I suppose they're rather extreme, but Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is primarily a rumination on the disparate tastes of pop culture anyway, so the more I watch it the more it all makes sense.

I know it has a lot of big names for the "Obscurity" label, but I only know a handful of people that have seen it. You should join them.