Customer Reviews

The Long Riders [VHS]

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I don't know why I am such a sucker for this film. It is too long, uneven, very slow in parts and certainly doesn't provide a happy ending. But it is one of the most honest yet entertaining westerns I have ever seen. The qimmick of using the Keach brothers as Frank and Jesse James and the Carradine brothers as the three members of the Younger family (plus throwing in the Quaid brothers for good measure)works wonderfully well. Always picturesque, frequently violent and bloody, this film evokes the unstable time just after the Civil War when the James and Younger gang were at their height. A terrific contrast is drawn between the James men, who are depicted as dedicated homebodies when not at "work", and the Youngers who are depicted as boisterous hell-raisers. Pamela Reed as Belle Starr is a standout in an already excellent cast. When Cole Younger and her husband square off for a knife fight she just smiles and declares "You boys sure do keep me entertained." The same could be said for this film. It is by far the best Jesse James film ever made, and with its sound track by Rye Cooder, a pleasant experience to revisit every year or so.

This appears to be a pretty accurate account of the James-Younger Gang, focusing on their Northfield, Minnesota bank robbery.

The James and the Youngers are protrayed as outlaws who were influenced by thier civil war service in and around Missouri. They had killed and stolen in service to their cause and then kept it up after the war ended. But they are not shown in a particularly heroic light.

Instead, they are shown as clannish desperadoes who are supported by the locals. David Carradine in particular does a good job as Cole Younger. The movie does a good job showing the peer pressure put on them after the Pinkerton people get their brother killed. It also shows the Ford brothers selling out Jesse James' life to the Pinkertons.

It does leave out the part in Northfield where the citizenry supposedly went into a hardware store and began grabbing rifles off the shelves with which to repel the invaders.

This movie gets gorey and gritty in spots, has cathouse scenes, and is not a "cowboy" movie to show to young kids.

Just as the 80s were beginning and the Western was about to take a sad, decade long sleep, Walter Hill, fresh from his unexpected success with the gang film "The Warriors," turned out this unique and utterly remarkable Western about the James-Younger gang. Using real-life brothers to play the outlaw kin (two Keaches, three Carradines, two Quaids, two Guests), Hill crafts an intense character study that plays like a collaboration between Western great John Ford ("Stagecoach") and Japanese master Akira Kurosawa ("Yojimbo", a film Walter Hill later remade as "Last Man Standing").

"The Long Riders" is close to plotless, but it paints a fascinating picture of the gang and the family and community ties that keep them together (the Ford influence right there...community was his great theme) while delving into the nuances of each character (this is where the fraternal casting really helps out). And Hill acheives all this depth in only 100 minutes! The action sequences are the best in a Western since Sam Peckinpah; the Northfield robbery is particularly striking and brutal.

Aside from Hill and all the great actors, cinematography Ric Waite and composer Ry Cooder deserve special mention for the film's success. Waite creates an authentic "period" look with his deep, glowing photography; the DVD transfer captures this perfectly for the first time. Cooder's score is completely against the grain for the time: small, intimate, and filled with forgotten folk tunes that help paint a picture of a united, family-built community. It is almost a companion piece for David Mansfield's equally intimate score for "Heaven's Gate," released the same year as "The Long Riders."

The DVD has no extras except for a trailer, but the film is so wonderful and so rewards repeat viewings that you should grab a copy of it right away. Believe me, you'll be stunned by this piece of film art.

"I ain't aiming to do nothing...I'm doing it!"

About once a generation a western appears that boldly announces it's telling history "as it really was" and generally reenergizes the genre. THE LONG RIDERS did that in 1980, although it got its history as wrong as did the earlier ones. Belle Starr is offered here as a notorious prostitute and lover of David Carridine's Cole Younger. Starr was never a prostitute, although she was an outlaw who gained posthumous notoriety when her exploits were exploited by an eastern writer. She didn't marry Sam Starr until Cole Younger was serving his second year in prison for his role in the Northfield robbery, so the film's mano-a-mano showdown scene between Younger and Sam Starr is pure hooey. On the other hand, Cole Younger DID receive 11 gunshot wounds during the botched bank robbery - a number, I guess, no movie would ever feel the need to exaggerate.
None of this is meant to find fault with THE LONG RIDERS. If I want to learn history I'll read a book. Movies are meant to deliver the emotional impact of the story in a manner accessible to the widest number of people. Rather than telling it like it is, these corner turning filmmakers deconstruct myths and rebuild them in terms more acceptable to modern audiences. The Pinkerton agents are treated more gently than might be expected and the James Gang is portrayed as just about what they were before the publicists got to them - not a modern day bunch of Robin Hoods, but a group of tough men who found robbery amenable and profitable.
THE LONG RIDERS is probably best remembered for its inspired casting of real brothers to portray the historical brothers who were members of Jesse James' criminal gang. Bearing fond memories of watching it twenty-five years ago, I was really looking forward to seeing it again two and a-half decades later.
Imagine my disappointment. James Keach, who plays Jesse James, gives one of the most wooden performances I'd ever seen. A smile never crosses his lips, an identifiable emotion never appears on his face. History books tell us the real Jesse James was a devil-may-care, gregarious type, much like Butch Cassidy, while Frank James was the taciturn one.
Beyond the action scenes and especially the final showdown in Northfield I feel THE LONG RIDERS is awfully slow moving and uninvolving.

"The Long Riders" is one of the best Westerns ever made. It concerns one specific facet of the West treated now in only three other films, all of which concern the post-Civil War careers of the Missouri riders: those men and boys who threw in their hands with Bloody Bill Anderson, William Quantrill, Archie Clements and other guerrilla leaders in response to the horrific depredations of the murderers and rapists from Kansas styling themselves "Jayhawkers" and "Redleggers" (the union militia from Kansas, known for their red gaiters). The other three films are "The Outlaw Josey Wales", "Ride with the Devil", and most recently, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".

Each of these films takes its measure of literary license, but each succeeds in recreating the historical reality of that era for modern viewers. "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is truest to the Western genre, while the other three all compete for historical accuracy in their own ways. "The Long Riders" is probably the best in its depiction of these men as continuing the Civil War in their own way, employing military-style tactics learned from their Missouri guerrilla leaders to rob trains and banks, and always wearing their distinctive, long grey dusters, which gave them the name "The Long Riders" (a name continued by Bill Doolin, Bill Dalton and the rest of the Oklahoma Long Riders).

The casting of the Keach, Carradine, and Quaid brothers as the James, Younger, and Miller (Ed and Clell) boys is a great touch, and Ry Cooder's arrangement of the music sets the period atmospherics perfectly (so much so that even "The Assassination of Jesse James" has to include a bit of "The Unreconstructed Rebel" with its defiant addendum from the Missouri riders: "I don't want no pardon, for anything I done.").

This film treats a piece of history that has been clouded and tarnished by dozens of traditional western portrayals employing all kinds of bad, stock stereotypes--none of which has any relationship to history or even reality. This film has the distinction of being the first to get at least a good part of the historical background, characterization, and period details right. David, Keith and Robert Carradine provide exceptional performances as the seldom-treated Younger brothers, and Stacey Keach is outstanding as Frank James. The weakest performance is that of James Keach as Jesse James, but it seems to have been a director's or screenwriter's choice to focus a minimum amount of time on Jesse James so as to highlight the rest of the gang. David Carradine's portrayal of Cole Younger is probably the strongest in the film, down to the capture of the shot-up Younger brothers after the botched Northfield raid and their dialogue with reporters and the authorities, which closely tracks the actual accounts. Despite the overdone development of the affair between Cole Younger and Belle Starr, the affair was real, and produced a daughter (an oft-overlooked historical fact; see Paul Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws).

I recommend this film to anyone interested in what these men were really like. No better film treatment exists, although "The Assassination of Jesse James" comes close with its periodicity.

As Sam Peckinpah's 'The Getaway,' Walter Hill's 'The Long Riders' almost elevates cinema violence into an art form...

Visually, 'The Long Riders' contains much that is stunning, even mesmerizing: the green Missouri scenic landscapes; the train robbery sequence; the stagecoach heist; the crossing of a wild river; but there is no question that it is the scene of the gang's disastrous foray into Northfield, Minnesota - that highlight this film... These specific episodes give 'The Long Riders' its rhythm, power, spectacle, and excitement...

With his slow motion 'terror shootout,' Hill seems to impress his viewers by showing them an inventive montage of high-level gory violence... But Hill's most wonderful sequences are those that were the most reserved: the wonderful moment when Frank is cutting the hardest wood with a forest ax and his brother Jesse, walking with his fiancée, attempting to settle down and raise a family...

Hill may have a reputation for being a tough guy, but his best screen moments (in "Hard Times", "The Warriors", "Streets of Fire") are the ones in which he allows his romantic tendencies to slip through, when he gives his characters the dignity that means so much to them... Hill tries to debunk the American myth that Western gunfighters were "heroes," and to show these embittered guys for the 'rough men that they really were.'

Hill's real intention is to present us with a gang of four families of brothers, and get us to accept them on their own terms, in their own brutal world... The men of 'The Long Riders' are at their most dastardly at the beginning of the film when Ed Miller (Dennis Quaid) indiscriminately shoots an innocent clerk, but for the rest of the film - one by one - Hill reveals their better, more 'human' sides... We further get to appreciate them as we compare them to the awful men around them; next to the Pinkertons killing a simple-minded 15 year old boy, they come out best, the 'good guys.'

To Hill, good and bad aren't on opposite sides of the coin; they share the edge...

"The Long Riders" is indeed a terrific western and the best film version on the James-Younger gang. "The Long Riders" transports the viewer to Missouri in the years after the Civil War when former Confederate guerrillas (the James, Younger, and Miller brothers) continued to rob banks, stagecoaches, and trains much as they had during the War. The famed Pinkerton agency is sent to bring the gang to justice either dead or alive. The film culminates in the gang's disasterous raid on Northfield, Minnesota and ends with Jesse's assasination by the Ford brothers.

Walter Hill's film stresses the community and filial ties of the gang that allowed them to be one of the longest lasting and successful criminal gangs in American history. These men had served together in the Civil War and, in some ways, the film shows that for these men the war never ended. However, Walter Hill does not paint these film's protagonists as "good guys"- they're responsible for the deaths of unarmed people and there is no sign that they shared their stolen loot with anyone. In fact, the various gang members are shown squandering their money on prostitutes, gambling, and drink. (The big exception is James Keach's Jesse, who is shown as devoted husband and father, but also comes across as the most ruthless and greedy member of the gang.) Walter Hill did not want anyone to think that these men were Robin Hoods.

Walter Hill likes to include homages to other films in his movies and "The Long Riders" is no exception. Several scenes and pieces of dialog in "The Long Riders" are actually from the classic Henry Fonda-Tyrone Power movie, "Jesse James." The entire train robbery scene and the line, "I ain't aiming to do nothing. I'm doing it!" are from that older film. Also, the gang's method of escape from the streets of Northfield was taken from "Jesse James," but it's done on much more grandiose scale in the "The Long Riders." One more thing that "The Long Riders" has in common with "Jesse James" is a Carradine in the cast. In "Jesse James" John Carradine, father of the three Carradine brothers who are together in "The Long Riders," played Bob Ford.

The script is a cliched mess, filled with lines that are forced retro-mythological and obvious, not to mention monosyllabic. Jesse's marriage proposal is a lumbering embarrasment.

Several of the performers appear to sleepwalk through their roles. Although this isn't the case with the wry performance of David Carradine who delivers his finest peformance and the spicey Pamela Reed as an iron tough and manipulative Belle Starr.

And yet this film by director Walter Hill somehow works. The photography by Ric Waite is absolutely dreamlike in its frail beauty. The costume design is romantic without being frilly. The cutting is tight. Hill's framing is carefull and rich and most of all, Ry Cooder's magnificent score breathes poetry.

All of these technical elements add up to make a flawed, but rich western film well deserving of a bigger following. Personally, if I could walk out of real life and into the imagined world of a film, this film, along with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "A Hard Day's Night", "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Lonesome Dove" would be one that would be ideal.

The technical achievements of this film all work together to overcome its other limitations. It is a film that truly creates a unique atmosphere of a time and place that really didn't exist in history but rather in folk tales and American Legendary Dreams.

This DVD, although devoid of any extras (I would love to have Walter Hill's commentary!)gloriously transfers Waite's photography.

My advice is to buy Ry Cooder's soundtrack on CD, put in the DVD, turn down the sound and enjoy.

I'm not much of a history buff, so I really couldn't tell you how much factual detail is contained within the film The Long Riders (1980), but in terms of a great western film, it falls a bit shy. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but given the amount of talent involved I expected a little more than what I got. Don't get me wrong, this is still a pretty good film, but it could have been better. Directed by Walter Hill (Hard Times, 48 Hrs.), the film features a number of Hollywood siblings including James and Stacy Keach (both of whom share writing credits for this film), David, Keith, and Robert Carradine, and Dennis and Randy Quaid. Also appearing is Christopher and Nicholas Guest along with Pamela Reed (Chattahoochee, Kindergarten Cop) and James Remar (The Warriors, 48 Hrs.).

The film is set shortly after the American Civil War, and follows the exploits of the James/Younger gang, comprised of Jesse (James Keach) and Frank (Stacy Keach) James, Cole (David Carradine), Jim (Keith Carradine), and Bob (Robert Carradine) Younger, and Ed (Dennis Quaid) and Clell (Randy Quaid) Miller (whew!). The film follows not so much a straightforward plot like we would normally expect in a film, but a series of what were probably actual, documented events, occurring over a decent span of time, strung together to relate the relative rise and subsequent fall (at the hands of the Pinkertons, among others) of some of the most famous outlaw (or infamous, however you look at it) figures in American history.

I thought the use of real life brothers (apparently Jeff and Beau Bridges were originally approached to play Jesse and Frank James, but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts) to depict the characters within the film was somewhat inspired, but then I couldn't help wonder if it was also a marketing tactic (it didn't feel like it)...either way, it worked, sort of...I guess I expected more `connectivity' between these real life brothers to come through on the screen. There was some of this, but not as much as I would have thought, and I think it had something to do with the limitations within the script. All the relationships seemed to be shown with a minimalist view, and not explored as much as I would have liked. I thought most of the actors did well, but James Keach seemed an unlikely choice for Jesse James...I guess I'm used to seeing him in more comedic roles, like in films like Cannonball (1976) or Moving Violations (1985). Here his serious, dramatic portrayal comes through pretty flavorless, and hardly instilled the belief that he was the brains of the operation. The story never really goes into the origins of the gang, other than they all seemed to come from Missouri, but does go into a bit of detail with regards to various crimes they committed, and the fate of each of the members. The makers of the film seemed to focus a lot of attention on detail, specifically regarding the look and feel of the film (costumes, sets, music, etc.), but I felt something missing within the characters. I think it was because the film takes place over a good period of time (in one scene we see a particular character courting a woman, another scene they're getting married, and yet another scene they have what appears to be a toddler), and doesn't delve into a great amount of specifics pertaining to particular events, instead loosely relating many events. Sometimes the passage of time is obvious, but other times its' not. One thing I did notice was that the film didn't appear to try and glamorize the outlaws, but rather tried to show them in a relatively realistic manner...it was apparent in the film that the divide between the North and the South didn't end with the war, as the Southerners generally viewed the gang with a sympathetic eye (especially since the gang seemed intent on only stealing from companies or institutions with Northern ties), and the Northerners, basically represented by the Pinkerton agents, were interested in upholding the law, with, perhaps an underlying motive of quashing any rebellious types still stinging over the South's loss, using it as a justification to commit criminal activities (that last part is just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth). Overall the direction was good, but Hill made some odd choices, in my opinion. The use of `wipes' to transition from scene to scene felt out of place, and stuck out in my mind. It's not an uncommon technique, but it just didn't seem appropriate for the material (I think a `fade out, fade in' tactic would have worked better). Also, the use of slow motion in some of the action scenes might not have been my first choice, but then again it's easy to play armchair director. I guess I am just more accustomed to seeing this type of tactic used in a more modern setting. I did like the action sequences (although it seemed like an awful lot of people kept getting shot in the shoulder), and the big finale near the end is worth sticking around for, if you don't mind lengthy periods of inactivity (these periods consisted of somewhat shallow scenes showing key members of the gang pursuing aspects of a normal life, i.e. marriage, family, etc.).

The wide screen anamorphic picture (1:85.1) looks very clean and clear on this DVD, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono audio comes through very well. There are Spanish and French subtitles available, but, alas, none for English...special features include a theatrical trailer and that's it...all in all this is a decent release of a very solid, slightly flawed film.

Cookieman108

I frankly fail to understand criticizing this movie based on its lack of historical realism. No one that I know of has ever held up "The Long Riders" as an example of a gritty western that shows history "as it really was." It's quite clearly a romanticized view of the James Gang, and unapologetically so. The cinematography is gorgeous and the Coles and Youngers, with the exception of the stylishly raffish David Carradine as Cole Younger, are handsome, clean, and stylishly dressed throughout. With that said, the movie is far more historically correct than most Westerns of the classic period. But sure, if you're a student of the period, you'll spot some rearrangements in the interest of the plot -- Frank has to be a sympathetic character for example, so Clell rather than Frank kills a bank teller in one scene.

What this movie does bring to light accurately is the rural setting in which the James/Younger clan did their business -- in fact it's hard to see why people think of it as a "Western," since it takes place almost entirely in the Midwest and since most of it was shot on location in Missouri. Must be the horses and the guns.

Beyond the uniformly strong performances, including a great small role by Dennis Quaid, I think the real strength of the Long Riders is its pacing -- if there's a scene too short or too long, I haven't spotted it. This is not just (or even primarily) a movie about robbing banks and trains. It's a movie about character and fate, and each scene gives new insights into the characters and their dilemmas. But sure, if all you want is action, go watch one of the Rambo movies. There are some great action scenes in this movie, but they are part of a whole, not the focus of the movie.

Many of the best scenes are quiet little bits of character exposition, like Pinkerton man James Whitmore Jr.'s wearily sarcastic interviews with the NYC newspaperman. The reviewer here who calls the approach "minimalist" is definitely on to something -- this is a film that shows you rather than telling you, and for such a big-deal Hollywood movie (the famous brothers, etc.), it's quite subtle -- a movie made up of connected vignettes. You've got to pay attention, but it rewards attention.

Is James Keach "wooden faced?" Absolutely. He looks eerily like Buster Keaton in this film, acting almost exclusively with his eyes. I guess that either works for you or it doesn't.

I do think the movie suffers on a small screen, and unless you have a killer home theater, you miss some of the impact of the excellent musical score (Ry Cooder's first significant film gig) and soundtrack. Overall, though, this film really hits the mark.