There are a couple of things you can gather from a title that reads The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The first is that it’s a longer title than a lot of other movie titles. The second is that – whoever this Robert Ford guy is – he’s sure getting stitched up in that title. Both of these things you can use as preparation to take into the movie with you.  

 In his first film as writer-director since 2000’s much-loved (& oft-quoted) Chopper, Andrew Dominik sure had the critics blasting their collective six-shooters into the air and yee-haing ‘genius!’ with the release of The Assassination last year. But is it really worth all that ammo? 

 To immediately shoot the suspense in the back, the answer is yes. But you have to remember the prep work you’ve just done. Plot-wise, it sounds like a walk in the park: the famous outlaw James gang is in its twilight years, and a boy (Ford) has dreams of joining the up and reliving their glorious heyday of mayhem and murder. He sets about ingratiating himself into the group – with limited success – and this is where the rub comes in. Because The Assassination isn’t really a movie about gunslingers and high noon, it’s a study of relationships, a story of the arbitrary injustice of life.

The Assassination is extremely deliberately paced – rarely do you see a movie these days that seems to revel in the whipping of the wind across corn fields, or the clop-clop of a horse’s hooves as it slowly brings a character towards camera focus. It’s not empty praise to say that Dominick’s unhurried style recalls Kubrick’s mega-slow pans of space in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

But where Kubrick’s almost-still cameras emphasised the loneliness of space, Dominic uses them (alongside beautiful shots of the American mid-West) to illustrate the loneliness of his characters – creating a mood where even a single gunshot is deafening, and a few ill-placed words excruciating. The Assassination’s atmosphere is absolutely perfect, and creates a feeling that transcends the action on screen to ooze out into the lounge room and linger on for days afterward. 

Of course, it wouldn’t work at all without some remarkable performances by Brad Pitt as the famous gunslinger James, Sam Rockwell as the dim-but-troubled Charley Ford, and – most of all – the incredible, studied creation of Robert Ford by Casey Affleck. Affleck plays Ford at just the right level, creating a character who is at once repulsive but deeply sympathetic. The actor’s transformation from nervous child to resigned world-weariness by the film’s end is itself a spectacular achievement. 

It’s of course a misnomer that Ford is shackled as a ‘coward’ by the film’s title, with the plot setting up a complex web of relationships and circumstances that results in the eventual cruel branding. In the end, Ford is no more a coward than James himself – both victims of their stations in life, both equally unable to get whatever it is they are striving for. It’s a melancholy sentiment, and one that many viewers seem to have missed in favour of interpreting the title without irony. 

The film is helped along by a sparse soundtrack from Warren Ellis and Nick Cave (who appears for a little ditty late in the proceedings), and sounds as sparse as it looks. The Assassination is beautiful and heartbreaking in the way that only great art can be, and is the work of a supremely confident director. Dominik has crafted a masterpiece, and one that I recommended without hesitation – it’s just important to remember your preparation.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is on DVD release now.