Hagiographic portrait of Jesse James, minus the ultimate martyrdom to bum you out. For the parched Western fan, staggering for months and years across the wasteland of the genre, it amounts to a canteen of sand. The first gorge-rising moment comes early, when pretty-boy Colin Farrell (the blackest brows since Groucho Marx) borrows Rooster Cogburn's reins-in-teeth trick from True Grit, freeing both hands for his shooting irons at full gallop, just as if this were something done every day in the oldendays, rather than, as in the John Wayne vehicle, a climactic and blood-stirring confirmation of what had been thought to be only a tall tale, a drunken boast. One of the great screen moments thus becomes a cliché. The gorge rises often thereafter -- at bits of Hong Kong-style gunplay, at bits of youth-comedy horseplay, at bits of Scott Caan (his mimicries of his father James) and Ali Larter (her permanent sneer). And if Timothy Dalton is indeed doing a Sean Connery accent -- one former Bond tipping his hat to another -- is this really the place for it? When there are no Westerns being made, you can hardly expect any new one to be directed by a specialist on the level of a Henry Hathaway or a John Sturges, but you could hope for someone slightly more suitable than the director of Flubber and Encino Man, Les Mayfield. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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