Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson), Jesse James (Robert Duvall) and their gangs get together to rob a bank. They figure it will be an easy job. With their many desperadoes, who will oppose them?
Philip Kaufman's third movie as a writer-director tries for a Sam Peckinpah sort of movie, covering the passing of the old west into modernity, with crazes like baseball and steam calliopes amidst the mud. He gets a different effect, however. While Peckinpah's characters know the times they are a-changin', Kaufman's are doing work at the same old stand with their old, rough, practical morality, which cannot stand before the easier, richer forces of civilization moving in from the east. In many ways, Kaufman's is a better movie; instead of the characters talking about the changes, Kaufman shows them to the audience, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. It is in the delineation of character, however, that Kaufman is Peckinpah's inferior. The people who occupy his world are not as bright, not as contemplative. The villains -- the bankers, the landlords -- are clearly uncomfortable in their heavy, ill-fitting clothes, while the heroes -- the Younger-James gang -- are sentimental rather than hewing to a moral or ethical code. There's no one to admire, even in part. Rather than moments of elation, every encounter between the two groups seems a disappointing, temporary victory.
I expect that was Kaufman's intention: to produce a minor-key tragedy, instead of an elegy. However, it's a series of unhappy events, rather than a portrayal of the punishment of hubris.
Philip Kaufman's third movie as a writer-director tries for a Sam Peckinpah sort of movie, covering the passing of the old west into modernity, with crazes like baseball and steam calliopes amidst the mud. He gets a different effect, however. While Peckinpah's characters know the times they are a-changin', Kaufman's are doing work at the same old stand with their old, rough, practical morality, which cannot stand before the easier, richer forces of civilization moving in from the east. In many ways, Kaufman's is a better movie; instead of the characters talking about the changes, Kaufman shows them to the audience, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. It is in the delineation of character, however, that Kaufman is Peckinpah's inferior. The people who occupy his world are not as bright, not as contemplative. The villains -- the bankers, the landlords -- are clearly uncomfortable in their heavy, ill-fitting clothes, while the heroes -- the Younger-James gang -- are sentimental rather than hewing to a moral or ethical code. There's no one to admire, even in part. Rather than moments of elation, every encounter between the two groups seems a disappointing, temporary victory.
I expect that was Kaufman's intention: to produce a minor-key tragedy, instead of an elegy. However, it's a series of unhappy events, rather than a portrayal of the punishment of hubris.