The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (6 out of 10)

After Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) murders Jesse James (Brad Pitt) he's handed the world's easiest job: A nightly play in which Ford and his brother Charlie (Sam Rockwell) re-enact the deed. It is, as envisioned by director Andrew Dominik, as campy as anything Lili von Schtupp could stage. Charlie stalks the stage like a dinosaur and drunk-yells his lines. Robert, in sticky pancake make-up, grinningly narrates every step of the incredibly mundane murder.

"That picture looks mighty dusty!" says Charlie-as-Jesse. He's dropped his holster and guns and is walking with his back to Robert Ford.

Robert turns to the audience. "It was then that I knew I had to take my chance!"

This is sort of a brave scene, as Dominik is reminding us in very bold, bright colors of his film's crucial flaw: Exposition. Over-exposition. Way too much narration. Dominik, adapting the wordy, Chabon-ish* novel by Ron Hansen, makes the odd decision to heave entire paragraphs and scene-settings from the page to the screen. The honest-sounding Hugh Ross (who played Erwin Sutherland in 1994's super-similar Wyatt Earp) is the first voice we hear, intoning weedy Hansen sentences that describe every action in a languid Brad Pitt montage. Pitt sits in a rocking chair. Voiceover: "He would sit for hours in his rocking chair." Pitt moves his mutilated hand through a field of wheat. "He was missing two knuckles on the middle finger of his left hand."

Is this a nitpick? I don't think so: The extra-faithful reliance on the source novel renders the movie more pretentious, and more jarring, than it should be. Dominik fades from well-acted scenes to spotty narrations, back to well-acted scenes in completely different settings, and we slowly intuit that Wood is trying to kill Richard Liddel or that Ed has betrayed Jesse. It robs the film of momentum and makes it feel like a ropey anthology piece.

If I sound churlish it's because the rest of the movie worked so well. The acting by two leads who are never taken seriously enough, Pitt and Affleck, is spellbiding. Affleck makes more with Ford than Pitt does with James, cracking his voice when he's supposed to be angry, slumping or straightening his tie when he's clearly trying to get his courage up. When he first meets Ford, sneaking up behind him in a forest, Frank James (Sam Shepard) takes in his pathetic begging, narrows his eyes, and says he's giving him "the willies." That's about right: Ford is a sociopath in the tradition of Norman Bates, more relatable but emanating that same sense of naive evil. Pitt's James is a bit too raffish and funny to generate the same emotions, but that's the point: He has charisma, and Ford hates him for rising so high with this unattainable, unlearnable advantage.

There are only maybe one or two acted scenes that don't work. For the first act, especially, I really wanted to love this movie. As it is I can recommend the movie with some reservations. Expect some pretention and awkward writing, but try and sift through that for some truly haunting acting, beautiful photography, and a true story that'd be hard even for Uwe Boll to ruin.

It's some how a consolation for me to know that not all Afflecks are as awfull as Ben. The Western genre has always been a favorite of mine and it's good to see it continue to garner more interest.