Watch I Shot Jesse James For Free

Too much of everything

I'll tell you why so serious

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

it reminds the Biblical stories. or damned characters of Dostoievski.in fact, it is an inspired western, proposing a hero, a coward mate and the fall of dreams, a show as remind of guilt and the public contempt. a film who did not demonstrate anything. only gives a large picture about gestures and fragile and obscure border between bad and good. and this transforms "I Shot Jesse James" more than a B western but a demonstration about values and expectations and illusion and friendship. the noble Jesse James and the knavish Ford. a story with moral veil who remains nice demonstration about limits and falls.

"Whatya got to eat?" asks Bob Ford, who backshot his great friend Jesse James not too long ago. Says Joe, the bartender at the Silver King Saloon in Creede, Colorado, "Sweet corn, cornmeal mush, cornpone with cracklins and corn whiskey." "I'll have it," says Bob. Lukewarm corn, cooked ambitiously, is about all there is in Sam Fuller's debut as a director. Fuller had been writing scripts and story outlines in Hollywood for quite awhile. Finally he made a three-movie deal with a B movie producer: If I can direct the movies, and I won't charge you, I'll write the screenplays. The first of the three, I Shot Jesse James, is a potentially intriguing story of a loser, but told with a script that has little tension, directed with little flair and acted, for the most part, with a dull, steady cadence. A good deal of the dialogue and many of the actors are just competent. Still, if you're a Fuller fan, I Killed Jesse James may be worth watching. It's part of Criterion's Eclipse Series 5 - The First Films of Samuel Fuller. The set includes The Baron of Arizona and Steel Helmet. Fuller, in my view, was not one of the great directors (or screenwriters; he usually wrote his own screenplays). He wasn't one of the great craftsmen, either. What he had was a tough, knock-about personal story, a confident willingness to dance to his own music, a streak of subversiveness that could undermine the fatuousness of Hollywood, the establishment and the nervous, and enough talent to take the commonplace material and actors he often was dealt and turn at least parts of his movies into something to admire. He was the kind of Hollywood non-Hollywood director that some cineastes and film critics adore. It would take a person wearing blinders, however, not to recognize that his movies are, at best, variable. Most of them don't hold up very well unless the viewer has been first captured by Sam Fuller's iconic anti-establishment reputation. Pickup on South Street is probably his best work, with fine performances by an A-level cast, an unusual script considering it was originally intended as an anti-Commie screed, and a story that Fuller keeps moving along. The Big Red One, highly praised by many, is an effective and realistic war movie dear to Fuller's heart. But it seems (to me) to go indulgently on and on and on. For the rest of his movies, those that I've seen, there's just excellent bits and pieces mixed into a B-movie sensibility, awkward dialogue (almost any scenes involving a man and woman), and too much discursiveness. Fuller, in my opinion, needed a strong editor to work with and a strong writer with whom to collaborate. I have a feeling that Fuller would find either prospect completely unsatisfactory. Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, anointed by Criterion, for me aren't just pulp movies, they're almost embarrassing examples of overwrought pulp movies. This is all just opinion. Watch The Naked Kiss and see what you think.But back to I Shot Jesse James. When Bob Ford (John Ireland) puts a bullet in the back of his friend, Jesse James, Ford hopes to gain amnesty and a large reward. He'd been befriended by James and had been part of James' gang. Ford wants to marry the love of his life, the singer Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton). He thinks he can leave the criminal life and settle down with Cynthy. Instead she rejects him. He's called a coward and a backshooter. Most people hold him in contempt. He gets only a small part of the reward. He still thinks that if only he can make money he can win Cynthy. And there's that straight talking' guy who likes Cynthy, too, a man named John Kelley (Preston Foster, top billed) who keeps showing up. There's a showdown, and that's that. John Ireland, in my view, had a lot of screen presence, but he needed a good script and strong direction to be at his best. Just watch him as Fantail in Raw Deal (1948), as Cherry Valance in Red River (1948) and as Jack Burden in All the King's Men (1949). Even in a piece of Brit noir schlock, The Glass Tomb (1955), he brings enough quality and interest to make it worth watching. Here, he's constrained by an uninspired script that gives him no opportunity to do anything but show what a sad sack loser Bob Ford is. But wait until that showdown. It only lasts a couple of minutes, but John Ireland shows what he can do.

(Some Spoilers) Having had his fill of robbing banks and shooting people as a member of the notorious James Gang young Robert Ford, John Ireland, only wants to get himself a piece of land that he can farm and live with his actress/singer girlfriend Cynthy Waters, Barbara Britton.Having no real money and being always on the run from the law Robert sees that a life with Cynthy is nothing but a pipe dream. In him not being able to care for here as well, in being a wanted man, putting her life, as well as his, in danger. It's when Robert sees an ad in the local papers offering a $10,000.00 reward, as well as total amnesty from the law, in bringing Jesse James, Reed Hadley, to the bar of justice dead or alive that a light bulb suddenly lights up in his head.Planning to off his boss Jesse James but not really having he heart or guts to do it Robert finally catches Jesse off-guard as he turned his back on him while adjusting a picture in his living-room. Robert's plan works perfectly as he blasts Jesse from behind and thus becoming eligible for the $10,000.00 reward.What the not so on the ball Robert soon finds out in that he gets stiffed by the authorities by getting only $500.00 of the $10,000.00 that he expected due to a slight technicality as well as becoming the most hated man in the west. That's in Robert being the man who shot the great Jesse James in the back! Not in a fair fight where he met the legendary bank robbing gunman face to face in the town square at high noon!What's worse for Robert is that his perfumed and rosy girlfriend Cynthy dropped him like a bag smelly horse manure when she found out that he murdered Jesse James whom she always thought that he was, by being so close to him, his best friend! And far worse then that is that Cynthy is now in love with John Kelly, Preston Foster, a sneaky sort of guy who was always after her by posing as a talent agent who can open doors, in the theater business, for her.Of course Robert, in being overly stupid or just plain love-sick, doesn't know that Cynthy dropped until much later in the film. Which leads to a showdown with Kelly in the town square but not at high noon but at sunset where he hopes he's be invisible to the naked, or Kelly's, eye.With the exception of the beginning and end of "I Shot Jesse James" that rest of the film tries to make Robert Ford into a truly tragic figure who got caught up in him being a member of the James gang who ended up corrupting him. It was that fact that director Samuel Fuller wanted to bring out in the movie in showing the audience that the great Jesse James was nothing but a murderous, some 30 years before the name was even coined, gangster who got just what he deserved! Even if it was a bullet in the back by one of his fellow gang members from a gun that he gave him for birthday present!

How sane can people idolize a cold-blooded, murdering and thieving scum like Jesse James? Over the decades, many, many films have portrayed James as sort of a "Robin Hood of the West", even though there was nothing to admire about the man. And, after he was killed by a member of his gang, songs were composed to the honor of James and declaring that the shooter, Bob Ford, was a coward. The way I see it, cowardly or not, shooting Jesse James in the back was a great day for mankind! Now I cannot compare this film to the recent film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" since I haven't seen it--hopefully it sticks closer to the facts. However, it's pretty obvious by the title that they take a very strong anti-Ford position. While Ford was a bad man, I just can't see how his killing James was anything other than a glorious day for mankind--just as if someone had "murdered" Ted Bundy.I SHOT JESSE JAMES repeats many of the myths since they abounded even during the time of James' death, but tries to explain Bob Ford's motivations--though I am unsure just how much anyone today can explain this accurately. At least it doesn't try to show the conflict in the usual black & white terms--with the myths of Jesse as the victim and Ford as a coward. Unfortunately, while the film debunks some of the worst myths about James and Ford, it creates some new ones---particularly how Ford died at the end of the film. Like the death of Jesse James, Ford was shot in the back at close range in real life--why they made him die in an "honorable" shoot-out is beyond me. This is specially strange when the film appears to be an attempt to tell Ford's true life story.The part of Bob Ford was played in I SHOT JESSE JAMES by John Ireland. Ireland was an extremely effective actor in Film Noir pictures of the day and is one of my favorite actors in the genre. Here he's in one of the rare Westerns he made and he did a pretty good job. I couldn't believe that one reviewer admitted that although they didn't know much about Ireland said how much they hated his acting. This seemed like a cheap shot and I wish they'd see some of his other films, such as THE GOOD DIE YOUNG or RAILROADED!.As for Sam Fuller's direction, this was his first effort and was amazingly effective even if the script was full of holes and clichés. Apparently this was all filmed in only 10 days, but the film appears complete, tight and well thought-out. For a 10 day effort, the film SHOULD suck--which it certainly does not.My advice is probably not to watch any of the films about Jesse James--after all, he was scum. Plus, until they free these films from all the clichés and rhetoric, I'm inclined to recommend that you instead read a book about him or Bob Ford.By the way, the famous song about the sad death of James at the hand of Ford that you hear in the film wasn't written until the 1920s, though there were other similar songs and stories written around the time of his death.