The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

I recently had a good friend of mine tell him that he considered The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford to be the past decades best film. I remembered getting it from netflix and needing 3 sittings to finish it, but otherwise I thought it was very good but when I was creating a list of what I believed were the decades top films I left it out. Then I saw it in the Walmart $5 bin, picked it up and now I regret leaving it out of my top 50 of the past decade.
The best way I can describe this film is to say that it is an epic western told in a similar style to a classic Greek epic poem. It is 2 hours and 40 mins long and the films director Andrew Dominik uses every second to create a mood and style that is so engrossing it makes your skin tingle with excitement. It is not a biopic of Jesse James or Robert Ford for that matter, but instead it is a carefully crafted retelling of American folklore and legend.
The films boasts an incredible cast lead by Brad Pitt as Jesse James, Casey Affleck in an academy award nominated performance as Robert Ford and Sam Rockwell as the regret filled Charley Ford. The movie picks up at the point in time when Frank James has decided to leave his brother and the famed James Gang for retirement and Jesse struggles to make sense out of what direction he would go next. As the James Gang commits their final train robbery Robert Ford makes his pitch to join the game. The two men remain together following the robbery and as Jesse becomes more suspicious Robert's admiration for Jesse turns to distrust which leads him to put into place a plan to turn Jesse in.
Of course, much like the film Titanic, the title of this film essentially gives much of the story away. We know on the day that Jesse meets Robert that Robert will one day kill him. And yet when the final encounter between the two men takes place there is a feeling of shock. The film grabs you with it's almost hypnotic narration (possibly the best narration in film history) and it creates a world that feels like a great painting. The characters are all rich with depth and we see and feel the conflict they go through and the internal demons they are dealing with. We feel every look and we feel what it is like for each character to live in a world in which they feel as though their in constant danger.
In watching this film a second time I thought of a higher profile film that portrays the life of a famous villain in American History, Public Enemies. While that one was more successful commercially, it was carried a distinct flaw. Each film had a main character that was destined to end the life of the famed villain, but were Public Enemies failed to give any life to it's assailant, the success of Assassination is that we get to know Robert Ford for all of his good and bad qualities and when the day comes that he must bring down Jesse James we understand what it means to him and the emotion of the moment is overwhelming.
It's safe to say given the box office grosses and relatively unsuccessful DVD run that if you are reading this you probably have not seen this film. It is not a film for everyone. It is challenging and time consuming, but if you give it your full attention it will overwhelm you with it's beauty and incredible sense of story telling.