Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) -vs- The Long Riders (1980)

Runnin' from the Law
Review by Jay Amicarella

The Smackdown.  "Kill all the lawyers!"  That's one of the first lines from the classic 1939 version of "Jesse James," starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as the title character, and his brother, Frank.  The saga of the real-life James Boys, their friends, the Youngers, Millers, and (hiss) the Fords has been a Hollywood staple for almost a century, and for every film, there has been a different interpretation of the legendary Missouri outlaw.  Jesse has been depicted in wildly differing films as outgoing, stoic, easygoing, stern, voluble, and taciturn.  "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" dares to suggest that the man that newspapers of the day compared to Robin Hood was no more than a vicious thug, who may have been going mad from the stresses of being hunted 24/7.  In 1980, "The Long Riders" put forth the idea that Jesse James was at his core, a devoted family man, and his robbing of trains, coaches, and banks was just a bad habit, like smoking.  Since the James' rode over two millennia ago, it doesn't really matter, to the people of today, what he was really like.  Historical accuracy is, at this stage, unimportant, because, ultimately, he was no more than a curiosity in an era where the local media didn't have enough news to write about.  The question for us is which film does its best to entertain, and advance the beloved genre of The Western.

"Maybe we could, you know, go for a ride or something together sometime, Jesse, if you felt like it."

The Challenger. Film buffs refer to classic films, sometimes, by their initials, so "Gone With the Wind" becomes "GWTW."  So what the hell am I supposed to do with this? TAOJJBTCRF?  It's way too long, and, at two hours, forty minutes, so is this film.  From the title, I guess I was expecting a rollicking action yarn, both poking fun and reveling in the genre; not a somber, deliberate to the point of inert, character study.  "Coward Robert Ford" is not interested in entertaining us, and also takes pains to show it is not to be categorized as 'Western.'  It does attempt to examine two men, Jesse (Brad Pitt) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), their motivations, strengths, weaknesses, and their uncomfortable similarities in temper and vanity.  The story begins during the waning days of Jesse James' life.  The colorful Youngers and the rest of Jesse's merry band are either dead, or in jail, and he is left with the Miller and Ford boys, and some others, the dregs of Missouri lawbreakers.  Frank James (Sam Shephard) warns Jesse that Robert Ford is not to be trusted, but, like many egocentrics before and after him, Jesse needs a sycophant, and young, weasely Bob Ford fills the bill. Plus, there is a homoerotic subtext driving the two men's fatal attraction. And, of course, Jesse pays the ultimate price for his weakness, and lack of judgment.  Clearly we're not in John Wayne territory, here, and that's fine, but why the pacing of a crawl?  Scenes that should have taken no more than a minute are drawn out forever, with endless close-ups of the actors' slow, mute reactions to somebody else's fraught-with-meaning lines.  And there is a needless narration, drawn from the text of the book on which the movie is based, that sounds like a Ken Burns' documentary series.  You know, those ten-hour tributes to Baseball or the Civil War?  "Coward Robert Ford" feels longer.

3:10 to Yuma (2007) -vs- Unforgiven (1992)

It's Not That Hard a Thing Killin' a Man
Review by Bryce Zabel 

The Smackdown. Westerns are routinely declared dead until one comes along that makes everyone realize the primal power they still exert -- in our hearts and minds, and as cinematic art. Clint Eastwood managed to breathe new life into the art form in 1992 with his revisionist "Unforgiven" and now director James Mangold has done it again with "3:10 to Yuma." These are both films that ask us to think about whether a man who has done unspeakable things can ever truly redeem himself from past demons and murderousness. The West is all about starting over -- the question is, does that apply to spiritual agony? Or to recover from that, do you need to die yourself?

"Take your shot, Munny, and the Old Guy gets it."

The Challenger. "3:10 to Yuma" is a remake of a classic 1957 western about a downtrodden rancher who bets his self-respect that he can get a charismatic and vicious outlaw to the train on time in order to face justice. Russell Crowe has inherited the outlaw role from Glenn Ford and Christian Bale takes over for Van Heflin. It's full of genre amp-ups that are one-side of cliche, but it's directed by Mangold from a script by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas in a way that feels fresh and original. This is the Wild West of the Arizona territory where a Civil War vet who lost a leg can go and start over as a rancher. It's also a place where a bad guy can get a gang together and steal from just about anybody and the only people who have a chance to stop them, work for the railroads. What it comes down to is a story about self-respect and how much a man has to sacrifice in order to find it.

"Don't matter, Wade. All Old Guys get it sooner or later."

The Defending Champion. "Unforgiven" became the classic western by starting as a genre buster that gave a cynical spin on everything that came before it. It won the Oscar for Best Picture and became the most recent standard for the measurement of quality. Its story is a variation on the deadly gunslinger who hangs up his shootin' irons and tries to go straight but events just won't let him. It gave Eastwood, the lead and the director, the chance to blow apart his iconic Man with No Name western image and replace it with something sadder. I'll never forget first hearing Eastwood utter a line written by screenwriter David Webb People's that "It's a hell of a thing killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." The set-up is fresh, though. A hooker has had her face cut in a small town saloon and her fellow whores have put out a reward to punish the man who did this. Events now inexorably drag a craggy and weathered William Munny into a final gunfight, against all of his better judgment.

The Scorecard. Where "Unforgiven" busts the genre with original characters and observations, "3:10 to Yuma" decides to puff the genre up and make it as muscular as modern movie-making will allow. This gives us in "3:10" a finale of a gunfight that simply defies the credibility of a shooting match the way that "Lethal Weapon" or "Die Hard" might get away with. We know it's not real, but we're in for the ride. Kevin Costner's "Open Range" -- another wonderful western -- did the same thing, throwing aside its hard won reality for a shoot-out finish that could never have happened in the West or anyplace else.

There's no doubt that Christian Bale's Dan Evans is wonderfully brought to life in "3:10" and that Russell Crowe's Ben Wade is a smoothly unique (if not completely credible) character. But "Unforgiven" also gives us Gene Hackman in the memorable role of Big Whiskey's sheriff, Little Bill Daggett, plus the cowering braggert called the Schofield Kid, played by Jaimz Woolvett, and Morgan Freeman as Munny's friend and riding partner, Ned Logan. These performances stay with me to this day.

If you like westerns (and I do), you loved "Unforgiven" and you liked Kevin Costner's "Open Range" and you will be rooting for "3:10 to Yuma" because you want to see more of these films made. None of these projects, by the way, come close to the poetry and grit of HBO's "Deadwood" which almost single-handedly changed the western genre into something it had never been before.

There is lots to like in "3:10 to Yuma." Extremely strong performances, beautiful scenery, and a thematic element worth rooting for. But this is a real fight, and the champ can't lose on points...

The Proposition (2006) -vs- Unforgiven (1992)

Review by Bryce Zabel 

The Smackdown! Two westerns about the collision of civilized values with the brutal realities of untamed lands. You should know that Hollywood studios are full of development people who look superior when they are pitched films set in the West as if the area is old and stale. I say to them, look at these films and get off your own stupid position. These are fine dramas made all the more vibrant by their distinct sense of place and time.

 The Challenger. "The Proposition" tells the tale of a West you may not have even considered -- the West of the Australian Outback. Indians are replaced by Aborigines and the lawmen who come to civilize things come from England not from the East Coast. This may be the most realistic and bloodiest film I have seen in a long time about an outlaw played by Guy Pearce who has to choose which of his two brothers to betray. Life is cheap, the teeth are terrible and the flies buzz ever second of every day.

"Here's what you can do with your deal, Mister."

The Defending Champion. Then there's Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" which won Best Picture because it was a western made by an actor/director who made his living playing a gunslinger on TV and early Sergio Leone westerns and knew how to subvert and bend the form into brilliance. You've probably seen this film, too. All I can say is that in repeated viewings, every time Eastwood's William Munny says, "It's a hard thing killing a man; you take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have," it gets me every time.

"Killin' a man's a hard thing but sometimes it's all you got."

The Scorecard. If cinematic realism is what you're looking for then "The Proposition" is what you want. It is so real that I felt hot and dirty and in need of a good teeth brushing after watching it. It's violent, unrelenting and powerful. "Unforgiven" is a great film about the West, but it is definitely a somewhat hyper-real look at that world. Still, the touches are all there, Eastwood is at his best and it deserved to win the Oscar. It captures that exact moment, it seems, when the Old West was changing into the world we have inherited. If a car had rumbled into the town at some point, it wouldn't have been all that much of a shock.

The Decision. I have to go with "Unforgiven" for the simple reason that it is going to remain a classic and film classes, for hundreds of years, when they study westerns, are going to study this film. "The Proposition" is a film worth seeing and Guy Pearce a wonderful actor but, in a few years, you'll grope for the title, say it was called "The Promise" or "The Proposition" or something and starred some actor whose name you can't remember. You will always remember that Clint Eastwood made "Unforgiven."

The New World (2005) -vs- Black Robe (1991)

Review by Bryce Zabel 

You may think you know the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas and the Jamestown settlement. But Terrence Malik's The New World strips that story down to its core and it's a thing of beauty. It is also a relatively balanced story where the "New World" being encountered is not just white Europeans meeting Native Americans (or "naturals" as they are called back then) but the feeling the naturals have seeing these men and their ships arrive, knowing in their hearts that things will likely never be the same. What Malik has brilliantly done is imagined how these two very different civilizations would come together and tell the story as a smaller, more personal, story.

"Got any women around these parts?"

Our Smackdown opponent is Black Robe which, when it came out 15 years ago, got inside my brain with some of its themes and images and has never let go.  It tells the story of the first contacts between the Huron Indians of Quebec and the Jesuit missionaries from France who came to convert them to Catholicism and, like the Jamestown settlers, turned out to be about the worst thing that could befall them.

Both these films go to extraordinary lengths to create a realistic depiction of what Indian life was like at the beginning of their encounters with the white men. If anything, Black Robe feels even more real but its story is also much bleaker and depressing. In addition, the story of Black Robe has not been told to any great degree in our history classes while The New World has been taught to nearly every American school kid. It is a story that most needs a telling like this new one.

The New World. Because it's a finely imagined, beautifully crafted, poem about the very, very beginning of this clash of civilizations and a fine love story at that.