The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

This movie is about the assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford, who was a coward. This movie is also about as slow and odd and curiously alluring as any I've seen recently.

Brad Pitt can act ("12 Monkeys," "The One with the Rumor"), and here he has his moments as Jesse James, but they are moments. I've seen several movies with Casey Affleck, but this is the first where I've noticed him. He plays Bob Ford, a sniveling, brownnosing, starry-eyed fan of the myth of Jesse James, who insinuates himself into the James gang and his hero's life. He has an almost Mark-Wahlberg-in-"Boogie Nights" ability to convey complex emotion without saying a word. (I say "almost" because no one's as good as Mark Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights.") But when he speaks and his voice cracks with immaturity and pain, he's even better. In a way, he's like Daniel Day-Lewis to Brad Pitt's Paul Dano, in that Affleck is so good that the fact that Pitt doesn't stack up to him detracts from the movie.

At over two and a half hours long, it's 45 minutes too long. One more film where restraint would make it much better. Too much of the film dwelt on the supporting James gang, which in the end didn't matter that much. Not that they weren't worth watching, especially the heretofore unheard of Paul Schneider as a lubricious wordsmith. And then, in one of the bigger WTF moments in last year's crop of films, James Carville shows up, but he's not an actor, which means this is a cameo, which makes one ask, WTF?

The narrator's language is so faux magniloquent and stiff that it's almost like a parody of Wes Anderson narration. In the beginning, the narrator merely fills in the gaps. But by the end, the narrator is telling you things you're seeing. It shows a lack of confidence in the film and an insulting assumption the viewer can't discern what's going on. We see that James has melancholy eyes when he's looking at Ford, which means we don't need someone telling us he's looking at Ford with melancholy eyes.

Amazingly shot, the film cribs much of its look, feel, tone, and -- unfortunately -- pace from Terrence Malick, especially his lackluster "Days of Heaven." The train robbery in the beginning cuts between white sheets set among the trees and looming, foreboding, ominous outlines of Pitt standing in front of the train. The cinematography and the Dirty Three-esque string music bring to my mind how another myth-making film of the South, "The Birth of a Nation," might look today, a comparison that sets the tone and one of the themes for what is to follow. Much of the early part of the film is people looking at each other and watching the weather change, with storms over the plains. As Borat would say, "It's nice."

Jesse James's last words -- "Don't that picture look dusty?" -- begin a transcendent and serene sequence, an improbable but poetic end to his life. But the movie doesn't end. In a carefully crafted coda, the movie explores themes that up until that point lay underneath the surface, exploring the nature of celebrity, the creation of a cultural myth, the pains of betrayal, and the limits of self-aggrandizement. It takes a myth and reduces it to a human face, and that of a weakling. It's a curious comedown from a movie that didn't bother to build suspense or pretend to be anything other than a character study or morality play.

It's a fascinating failure of a movie that I sincerely hope to see again soon. It's literary, beautifully filmed, and well acted, and yet it's a plodding, scattershot mess, but it never becomes dull or unwatchable and is at times transfixing.