Biopic loosely based on the last 18 years of Jesse James' life and focused on the relationship between brothers Jesse and Frank James. The last eighteen years in the life of Jesse James, showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill's raiders, his career of banditry with his brother Frank and the Younger brothers, and his attempt to lead a peaceful life after the disastrous attempt to rob the bank at Northfield, Minn. There's not a big difference between the heroes of "Rebel without a cause" and the James bros.All are immature young people ,taking a rebel stand against the establishment (the well meaning society for Dean,Wood ,Mineo and their pals,the Yankees for these western Robin Hoods) .If the second movie is not as successful as the 1955 work (and as Ray's other "westerns " "Johnny Guitar" and "Run for cover" ) it's because the actors,with the staggering exception of Wellesian actress Agnes Moorehead,do not have great screen presence (Robert Wagner will improve with age).<br/><br/>This is a western "a la "Citizen Kane" ,using now dying Moorehead's memories,now Lange's regrets ,now Frank's remembering what went wrong. In the poems she wrote ,Bonnie Parker alluded to the James brothers and it's obvious that Arthur Penn was certainly influenced by Ray when he directed his "Bonnie and Clyde" .(Jess's desire to have a home and to live in peace with his wife is also Clyde's)<br/><br/>A minor work in Ray's canon,it's worth a watch though. About the only thing I can say about The True Story Of Jesse James is that it's invested with a little less star glamor than the 1939 version with Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as the James Brothers. Here Jesse and Frank are played by Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter with a bit more of a realistic style rather than it being substantially true.<br/><br/>Otherwise a lot of the same ground covered in flashbacks rather than a straight narrative is used. In fact Nunnally Johnson who wrote the 1939 screenplay for 20th Century Fox is given a screen credit here. The same theme is used here, Jesse might have turned outlaw for good and sufficient reason, but was getting a real taste for it by the time the Ford Brothers did him in.<br/><br/>There is a harbinger of the Oscar nominated performance that Casey Affleck gave a few years ago in the most recent Jesse James film in Carl Thayler's brief appearance as Bob Ford. Thayler hints at what Affleck spent a whole film doing, showing that Ford was a mixed up kid who thought he would gain public approval shooting down a notorious outlaw. However a sadly neglected Jesse James film was done in the Nineties by Rob Lowe as Jesse.<br/><br/>For better or worse many consider Jesse James as the last Confederate out there when he died in 1881. He certainly was a hero to many of the defeated Confederates doing what he did to the banks and railroads who were controlling a lot of the agrarian south and west.<br/><br/>Not true, but The True Story Of Jesse James is a passable retelling of the events that made him the legend he became.
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295 weeks ago