Both men have eyes and ears for minute details, a monumentally slow but often impressive sense of pacing, an undisciplined desire to follow unimportant characters off on tangents, a strange need to keep telling us things we've already absorbed. In Dominik's case, this takes the form of a droning voiceover by Hugh Ross, who plays none of the characters but frequently speaks about 1) things we can see them doing at the exact same time or 2) poetic notions of their mental processes. ("And the omens promised bad luck, which moated and dungeoned him.
") His adaptation of Ron Hansen's novel presents a Jesse (Brad Pitt) who's masquerading as a family man but is actually an unhinged killer who can repeatedly smash the face of a young teen to get information, even if he feels remorseful afterward. (There's scarcely a mention of his Civil War past, when the racist James rode with Quantrill's Raiders.) We see him in the last year of his life, long after the Cole-Younger gang has dissolved.
Jesse and brother Frank (Sam Shepard in a small role) have recruited rubes, cousins and petty crooks to form a new gang, including brothers Charlie and Bob Ford (Sam Rockwell and Casey Affleck). Charlie's an affable dunce, but 20-year-old Bob's a puzzle: seemingly a shy nincompoop, but one whose long idolatry of James leads to imitation, jealousy and mistrust at the same time. The film makes a case that the latter two emotions take over at last, causing the snubbed and resentful Ford to shoot James in the back in 1882.
(He also has monetary motives and a desire to keep out of jail himself.) The most gripping scenes pit the two enigmas against each other, and the superb Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck are more evenly matched than you'd think. Neither's a versatile performer, but Dominik uses their strengths-cheerful menace for Pitt, foolish cockiness for Affleck-to best effect.
He benefits from other fine performances, including Rockwell's, Jeremy Renner's and especially Garrett Dillahunt's as shabby robbers. Their naturalness doesn't go well with the self-conscious artsiness of the presentation, which demands you admire it at every moment. Masterful cinematographer Roger Deakins finds all the right colors, but either he or Dominik often blurs the edges of the frame while keeping the center in focus.
(Yes, I know 19th-century photos often looked that way. It's still a film-school trick.) They also shoot through wavy, distorting glass and keep eyeing ominous clouds on the horizon, using weather to underscore the emotional climate.
These are gimmicks worthy of their Malick-borne inspiration; if you like them in his films, go and enjoy.
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