Jesse James
Jesse James
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.
eif999 reviewedJanuary 24, 2025
Revisiting after going down a Jesse James rabbit hole this week. A fine big-budget color western that makes every cowboy tall and handsome, and every other man short and squat. I’m a sucker for the look of early color films and this one looks like a dream. The shot of James crawling atop a lit train moving train is particularly breathtaking. The horses riding through a shop window to escape is aped almost exactly in The Long Riders. The film doesn’t a good job telling the story of how the stress of the life can break up a family. Of course Jesse’s wife Z goes from Tyrone Power to the arms of Randolph Scott like she’s the only woman in the west so yeah hard to feel sorry for her.
Every film that covers that last bank robbery and the coaxing of Ford to shoot him is never not fantastic. It’s like Count of Monte Cristo movies in that nearly every Jesse James film is good - except for James movies with Robert Wagner and the Frankenstein one.