It's been a while since I've seen a film that has split the critics as much as Andrew Dominick's film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times writes, "The cinematography may speak to Mr. Dominik’s yearning for meaning and importance more than it does of his outlaw, but the visuals often dazzle and enthrall. (The images that approximate the blurred distortions characteristic of pinhole photography are especially striking.) They also distract and, after a while, help weigh down the film, which sinks under the heaviness of images so painstakingly art directed, so fetishistically lighted and adorned, that there isn’t a drop of life left in them. Instead of daguerreotype, Mr. Dominik works in stone."
On the other hand, Pete Travers of Rolling Stone notes, "Adapting Ron Hansen's 1983 novel, Dominik paints a richly detailed mosaic on locations in Calgary and Winnipeg, and you can only marvel at the visual miracles achieved by cinematographer Roger Deakins. But it's in the scenes after Jesse's death, when Dominik pits truth against legend, that this intimate epic shows its teeth."
It's rocking a 59% percent Cream of the Crop rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
I bumped into Chris Cranford last night and he told me that he didn't much care for the film when he saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival, something Philip Martin mentioned in his On Film column in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Friday.
