Assassination of Jesse James (Blu-ray) (2007)

Entertainment Weekly
"[A] haunting retelling of one of the enduring outlaw sagas in American culture...shot by the brilliant cinematographer Richard Deakins in a wide-open geography of moody skies and fields plaintive with bent light and shadow." -- Grade: A 09/28/2007 p.86

Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "[T]his quiet wow of a Western sneaks up as one hell of a satisfying surprise. Artfully exciting and compulsively watchable..." 10/04/2007 p.85-86

Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's awash with melancholy and ennui, love and betrayal, obsession and paranoia and arrives like manna from movie heaven....An instant classic, with poetic visuals..." 11/01/2007 42

Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] slow, meditative poem that harkens to the verdant sprawl of Terrence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN." 10/19/2007 p.58

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "Malick, Kubrick and Cimino would surely recognise a kindred spirit in Dominik....[A] weighty monument to the death of the West..." 12/01/2007 p.131

Sight and Sound
"The film has a good feel for the Victorian milieu in which it is set....Roger Deakins' photography makes the most of the bleak winter landscapes of the Midwest, evocative of the coldness and emptiness that lie in the heart of Jesse James." 12/01/2007 p.51

Los Angeles Times
"What transfers best is Pitt's intriguing performance as the outlaw king....The casually charismatic aspect of Jesse James is second nature to Pitt..." 09/21/2007

Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "With breathtaking cinematography and a masterful score that manages to be both plaintive and foreboding, Dominik's film slowly works its way under the skin, steadily building to a heart-wrenching climax..." 05/01/2008 p.98

ReelViews 7 of 10
Parts of the movie are brilliant in a Terrence Malick-inspired way, but the lugubrious middle section is badly in need of the hand of a ruthless editor. The Assassination of Jesse James starts and finishes strong, but it will lose numerous viewers during a frustrating, meandering middle section that spends so much time fleshing out secondary characters that it often forgets about the title individuals. Ironically, it's the movie's half-hour coda that contains the most compelling material - material that often feels rushed and truncated...It wants to play like a sprawling novel that provides insight into all of the characters, not just the main ones. But films are not novels and this approach encourages viewer apathy. Also curious is that the most intriguing material in the movie - the way that public opinion toward Ford changes after James' assassination - is given short shrift. That's when the movie comes alive and becomes vital. That's also when it ends. As Westerns go, this feels like the kind of thing Terrence Malick might produce if his creative powers were ebbing. It's far less engaging than the recent 3:10 to Yuma remake and concentrates more on the details than the broad picture. There's a place for this sort of thing in the genre, but The Assassination of Jesse James is too protracted and oblique to represent it effectively. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
The movie has the space and freedom of classic Western epics. Like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Days of Heaven," it was photographed in the wide open spaces of western Canada, where the land is so empty, it creates a vacuum demanding men to become legends. Jesse James is such a man, a ruthless killer and attentive father and husband, glorified in the dime novels that Robert Ford memorizes. If Ford is a coward, what does that make James, who led his efficient gang in stagecoach and bank robberies that involved the deaths of unarmed men and women? Yes, but he did it with style, you see, and Ford is only a callow squirt...The film was written and directed by Andrew Dominik, based on the novel by Ron Hansen. It is Dominik's second, and has a great deal in common with his good first film, "Chopper" (2001)...There are things about men, horses and horizons that are uniquely suited to the wide screen. We see that here. The Western has been mostly in hibernation since the 1970s, but now I sense it stirring in rebirth. We have a program to register the most-read reviews on my Web site, and for the month of September the overwhelming leader was not "Eastern Promises," not "Shoot 'em Up," not "The Brave One," but "3:10 to Yuma." Now here is another Western in the classical tradition. - Roger Ebert