A drawn-out 'Assassination'

Put in simplest terms, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is a film whose reach exceeds its grasp. Hugely ambitious and not without moments of success, this indulgent 2 hour and 40 minute epic ends up as unwieldy as its elongated title. It's a movie in love with itself, and few things are more fatal than that.

That long title comes courtesy of Ron Hansen's novel about the death of the celebrated 19th century desperado, already a character in some 30 films, a book that so captivated writer-director Andrew Dominik and star Brad Pitt that they seemingly would not rest until they brought it to the screen.

In truth, that 1983 novel is a haunting work that adds beautiful writing and psychological acuity to the familiar dramatic dilemma of why fellow outlaw Ford (Casey Affleck in a much-talked-about performance) murdered a man he considered his friend. While historians and biographers saw the size of the reward -- the equivalent of perhaps a million dollars today -- as the key factor, Hansen envisioned a near-Shakespearean tragedy of jealousy, paranoia, thwarted ambition and hero worship curdling and turning sour.

While some of that complexity has made it to the film, "The Assassination of Jesse James" turns out to be the latest in a long string of adaptations seduced by a book's literary qualities only to learn the hard lesson that seeing is not believing, that things that work on the page do not necessarily transfer to the screen.

What transfers best is Pitt's intriguing performance as the outlaw king, which won him the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival. The casually charismatic aspect of Jesse James (described by novelist Hansen as someone who "ate all the air in your lungs and the thoughts right out of your mind") is second nature to Pitt, but there is also an air of unsettling mystery around James and, as the film progresses, expressions of darker things as well.

But, despite getting first billing in the title, this film is much less Jesse James' story than it is Robert Ford's, and that is a problem. Not with Affleck's performance, which is precisely what the character calls for, but with the nature of the character.

Ford turns out to be one of the most off-putting individuals you never want to meet, someone who immediately lives up to the way he introduces himself (in book and film) to Jesse's brother Frank: "Folks sometimes take me for a nincompoop on account of the shabby first impression I make." So shabby that Frank James (Sam Shepherd at his orneriest) speaks for the audience when he replies, "I don't know what it is about you, but the more you talk, the more you give me the willies."