First the bad: sudden, jarring changes in tone. It veers abruptly from grim, bitter drama to clever caper movie to unfunny comedy. These shifts are badly exacerbated by the messy, eclectic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink score, which all too often comments on scenes in ways I found ill-fitting and inappropriate. A couple of examples: an early scene in which Jesse riles up the boys by going into a feverish Southern preacher mode, to get them fired up for the titular bank job, is turned from creepy and compelling into light-hearted comedy by the wacky music behind it; similarly, late in the film, a citizen posse chasing the gang commits an atrocity on four innocent men, and the music again makes light of it, with an ironic silly 'wah wah wah'. Just awful. What were they thinking? Also bad, an interminable scene of a raucous baseball game comes out of nowhere and drags on and on with utterly unfunny slapstick. The subplot with the Pinkertons adds next to nothing. The cinematography is too often flat and TV-like.
Now the good, and the reasons I gave this a 7 anyway: excellent performances from Robertson and Duvall and the supporting cast, and a very strong screenplay, well-paced, with believable characters whose individual traits are clearly delineated. Cole Younger is a crafty pragmatist, keenly interested in modernity as represented by machinery, ready to leave criminality behind and change with the times; Jesse James is shown as his opposite, an embittered true believer in the Confederate cause, who uses that belief as justification for continued criminal violence. In this theme of men unable to change with the times, the film is akin to some of Peckinpah's work.
Also good are fundamentals like art direction, locations, costuming, and set design. This is all handled with grubby veracity, in the same vein as other films from around the same time like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller". It really excels here.
On the whole, the character-driven, group-dynamic elements of the story are so fully realized that they make the movie compelling and worth watching in spite of its tonal flaws.
Now the good, and the reasons I gave this a 7 anyway: excellent performances from Robertson and Duvall and the supporting cast, and a very strong screenplay, well-paced, with believable characters whose individual traits are clearly delineated. Cole Younger is a crafty pragmatist, keenly interested in modernity as represented by machinery, ready to leave criminality behind and change with the times; Jesse James is shown as his opposite, an embittered true believer in the Confederate cause, who uses that belief as justification for continued criminal violence. In this theme of men unable to change with the times, the film is akin to some of Peckinpah's work.
Also good are fundamentals like art direction, locations, costuming, and set design. This is all handled with grubby veracity, in the same vein as other films from around the same time like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller". It really excels here.
On the whole, the character-driven, group-dynamic elements of the story are so fully realized that they make the movie compelling and worth watching in spite of its tonal flaws.