Just like his contemporary Billy the Kid, Jesses James has become the subject of a myriad of books and films. Heck, even Roy Rogers made a couple ("Days of Jesse James", "Jesse James at Bay") that capitalized on the name but didn't really have anything to do with the real life outlaw. This film actually turns the James-Younger Gang into the Younger-James Gang, with Cliff Robertson headlining the cast as Cole Younger and Robert Duvall taking a back seat as a maniacal, God-fearing Confederate sympathizer still fighting the Civil War.
The picture provides an interesting diversion with that new fangled national sport called baseball. The first time I ever saw a ball game in a Western was in a Richard Boone episode of 'Have Gun Will Travel'. In that one, a base runner was shot attempting to stretch a team mate's hit to score at home plate and was summarily shot by an opposing player. I was fully expecting to see that here, but the game stayed civilized with only full body contact used to thwart the opposition. One wonders why they needed an umpire.
Back in Northfield proper, the outlaws prove that robbing a bank can indeed be a shovel ready job. If the true history of the raid included a gang member getting locked in the bank safe, I'd never heard of it before. It didn't seem plausible to me even if it did happen, but I'm intrigued enough to look it up later. For revisionist Western fans, this one will prove to have some merit, though for my money, I'll take the 1980 Walter Hill flick "The Long Riders" with that amazingly choreographed slow motion horse jump through the windows for the getaway. Now that was a wonderment.
The picture provides an interesting diversion with that new fangled national sport called baseball. The first time I ever saw a ball game in a Western was in a Richard Boone episode of 'Have Gun Will Travel'. In that one, a base runner was shot attempting to stretch a team mate's hit to score at home plate and was summarily shot by an opposing player. I was fully expecting to see that here, but the game stayed civilized with only full body contact used to thwart the opposition. One wonders why they needed an umpire.
Back in Northfield proper, the outlaws prove that robbing a bank can indeed be a shovel ready job. If the true history of the raid included a gang member getting locked in the bank safe, I'd never heard of it before. It didn't seem plausible to me even if it did happen, but I'm intrigued enough to look it up later. For revisionist Western fans, this one will prove to have some merit, though for my money, I'll take the 1980 Walter Hill flick "The Long Riders" with that amazingly choreographed slow motion horse jump through the windows for the getaway. Now that was a wonderment.