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Rating: Q=7, P=4 / Can't Get Enough
Scale 1=3, Scale 2=4, Scale 3=3, Scale 4=1
Biopic, Frontier, Crime, Loyalty
It seems that every film Casey Affleck stars in depresses me...this one is just grueling. But it is absolutely gripping and starkly beautiful. Everything about the men in this film makes me sad. Affleck does a magnificent job of portraying a young man who craves glory and who tries to grapple with his destructive idolization of Jesse James. Great performances by Sam Rockwell and Brad Pitt, too. The legend of Jesse James (and any other infamous or notorious celebrity later) is rife with contradictions and falsehoods. It is exceedingly romanticized. Here is an early example of what happens if you are desperate to be noticed and your boyhood hero doesn't turn out to be anything like what you read or dreamed. Not even close. The assassination of Jesse James was less a murder of a man and more the destruction of an idea.
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