I wanted to watch this film because I love westerns and they really haven't been much in production since the 50's, and I admit that Brad Pitt is perhaps one of my favorite actors. The film is really long (nearly 3 hours) and actually has the same violence rating as films such as Lord of the Rings and other PG-13 action movies on "Kids-in-mind.com" though it was given an R rating. It was interesting to think about this phenomenon in light of a comment a peer of mine made in one of the last days of the term this Spring. He mentioned that he has actually walked out of many PG-13 films because of the use of violence is so immoral. That might sound sort of weird, but in thinking about it it made a lot of sense. To show tons of violence just because it is "cool" or "fun" or makes you want the bad guy to get demolished is frankly not right. On the other hand, some filmmakers use violence merely to show how things really are/were and not necessarily for the audiences enjoyment, but more for their education. I will talk about this a bit more in my X men review soon.
Jesse James had violence in it, yes. But what made it so intense was the suspense created by the acting and amazing cinematography. Pitt's character (James) is displayed as a tortured soul that can't find peace. His friends and family slowly turn on him as they try to get out of his way and seek after the worldly things. Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) starts as an admirer of James, and over the course of the film this admiration turns to jealousy and hatred.
As the film was wrapping up, and Ford was killed too - I thought about how both men (James and Ford) appeared to have suffered from the same thing: lack of love. They couldn't settle for loving others more than themselves, and this led them no where. The anger and frightening power that comes from an unloved soul is scary, and this western showed that in such a remarkable way.
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