Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" – Grim Viewing

Brad Pitt was a disastrous choice for the lead.  Perhaps his casting was designed to add some commercial clout to a slow and artily shot film.  He simply can’t act at all.  His one mode of acting is smirking and while this may work reasonably well as the outlaw with a reputation to uphold, it wears a bit thin when applied to every situation – he even smirks when he’s crying.  Presumably he took the role to get an Oscar but if so, it didn’t work.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

It’s an interesting idea, an outlaw so notorious that the only way out for him is death, so he encourages and controls his own assassin.  But I couldn’t get past Pitt.

Review continues below...

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And Roger Deakins’ cinematography annoyed me – with its washed out colours and high contrast settings, most of the time it looked like the kind of photographers I hate the most on Flickr.

Personal Score: 2/10


This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on the BBC's Top 21st Century films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.