The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Brad Pitt stars as Jesse James

Missouri 1881: Jesse James and his gang perform a big robbery on a train. For the occasion, gang member Charley has brought his teenage brother Robert along.

Robert  ( Casey Affleck ) joins the gang and gradually spins towards the inner circle, moved by an obsessive veneration for Jesse ( Brad Pitt ) to whom he feels linked in a manifold way.
But as the title says from the start, this is not going to last. The world-weary hero and the arrogant youngster are only going to be linked in death, and not in the way they wanted.

One of the greatest myths of the Wild West, the life of legendary outlaw Jesse James, is revisited to expose his humanity, weakness, even his heroic sense of destiny.
When troubled Robert Ford meets Jesse, the latter is already a star and Robert his fan, or his wannabe groupie. A homosexual undercurrent flows between the two throughout the film, or at least from Bob, the eternal “kid” who wants to prove he’s a big man now, to the great and successful Jesse.

In fact, their relationship is more complex than a mere erotic one: Jesse really sees Bob as a disciple, an elder son, and thus accepts being killed by him.
Bob, on the other hand, is so obsessed with his desire to be an adult that he has to “kill his father” - as every book of Freudian psychoanalysis illustrates.
But his own cowardice proves he is not ready to pass this modern rite of initiation; and little Robert will try to atone his guilt until his own untimely death.
A meditative, slowly paced yet tense and gripping essay on human hierarchy and celeb-worshipping, the film is a killer thanks to a perfect cast, wonderful specs and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s rough and beautiful score.      

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