..........now that's a movie title!

One of my "things" is watching movies. I love a good movie that makes me think, and I thought this looked pretty interesting. I didn't see any of the reviews that it got when first released to the theaters, and I usually don't pay a lot of attention to movie reviews anyway. It appeared to me that this movie was going to get inside of Jesse James' head a bit, and would maybe reveal some of the stuff that popular history has not told us. If you haven't seen the movie, I will tell you that it's a little dark - no, its very dark. You see the mindset of a bitter Civil War veteran who never accepted defeat, and that of a paranoid criminal who does not value human life in the least. If the movie portrayal of people in the 1880's is anywhere near being accurate, it was a very scary time just to be a common person. The obvious lack of education and standards for personal behavior are quite evident. I was impressed by one thing, though. There was no sex scenes in the movie. There was; however, an ample supply of bad language and killings. Before seeing the movie, I really didn't know much about what Robert Ford did following the killing of Jesse James. If the movie is accurate, he performed in a stage show with his brother, Charlie Ford, until the public grew weary of the performance. Robert Ford had an obsession with Jesse James that began when he [Robert] was a boy. Jesse James became his idol, and who he wanted to become. The killing was something of a statement that he would become greater than James by killing him. In the stage show circuit, Ford claimed to have killed Jesse James over 800 additional times. Following the killing, it was reported that more people knew who Robert Ford was above and beyond the President of the United States. Robert Ford made a lot of money, and was eventually killed by a shotgun blast in his own Colorado saloon. If you haven't seen the movie, I do recommend it. You won't come away feeling good about much of anything; but you will see some of the inside workings of the later days of the James Gang and Jesse's paranoid criminal mind. I thought Brad Pitt did a great job as Jesse James. He seems to fit in well with the whole turn of the century western thing (i.e. A River Runs Through It, and Legends of the Fall).

On a brighter note, I can't wait until the new Indiana Jones movie comes out. I love the summer movies, and Indiana Jones has always been one of my favorite movie series.