with the excellently long title of the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, you get the inkling you are in for a long one. at 160 min it is indeed long, but incredibly watchable.

i don't know enough about jesse james & the whole mythos to get into hair-splitting detail. i do know, though, that the film's slow, meditative pace is captivating. and that brad pitt, casey affleck & sam rockwell all do the western film tradition a good turn with their contemplative performances. isn't this what a good western should be? like the zombie genre, the western is best served with a heaping side of existentialism.

this is another one of those films i was skeptical of, but which blew my expectations away. i don't want to like brad pitt, but he does so many damn good roles that i can't help but admire his acting (admittedly, he didn't take off for me until 1995 in se7ven - although i think i liked him in kalifornia i can hardly remember that one anymore). when i look at his list of work, though, i admit i have skipped every third or fourth film. life's too short to take a 90 minute chance on some of them.