Every decade or so, a film comes out claiming to be ‘the true story’ of those post-Civil War bank-robbing James Brothers (and their Confederate confederates: Brothers Younger, Miller & Ford). Only Billy the Kid and Frankenstein have seen more ‘true’ iterations. But with ‘truth’ more debatable than ever (what the hell is the ‘true’ story of Frankenstein, anyway), it’s probably best to view these films as reflecting their times rather than historical times. Less ‘PRINT the legend,’ as THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62 would have it (while doing quite the opposite), than ‘USE the legend.’ Here, with Philip Kaufman’s star-crossed mismatch of Old & New Hollywood in THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID/'72 a mere eight years back, Walter Hill, directing but not writing, goes all revisionist vision, heavy on the Sam Peckinpah slo-mo action & violence. You can feel the ‘pull wires’ under stunt doubles’ costumes thru the earthtone palette & autumnal color design, that litmus taste-test of ‘80s cinema. What ultimately sells the film is a gimmick (yeah, but a great gimmick) in having real acting brothers as the felonious boys on the run from the relentless Pinkerton office: James & Stacy Keach, Randy & Dennis Quaid, Christopher & Nicholas Guest, and best of all those Carradine half-brothers, David, Keith & Robert Carradine. What was that family Thanksgiving like?
DOUBLE-BILL: Hill’s best Western, which he wrote & directed, was WILD BILL/’95, with a staggeringly fine Jeff Bridges. Poorly received/largely unseen, it was partially redeemed when it became the unacknowledged pilot to that overrated series DEADWOOD/’04.
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