Rent The Long Riders (1980)

Flawed Revisionist Western - The Long Riders review by GI

Director Walter Hill is quoted as having referred to this film as 'a strange piece'. It's an interesting description because despite it's genre roots it has a meandering feel to it and certainly doesn't know when to end. This can be described as a revisionist western combining historical realism with Hollywood and genre traits. The shoot outs are all slo-mo bloody squibs with bodies being thrown through windows etc by the sheer force of gunfire and in these aspects it's all very OTT. In the scenes in bars, whorehouses and homesteads there is an attempt to recreate a sense of history. All of this makes the film interesting, entertaining and needy of some cohesion. Hill is a Sam Peckinpah wannabe but lacks any of Peckinpah's lyrical poetry or his sense of balance. The big set piece gunfight in Northfield which is almost the film's conclusion is a direct copycat of Peckinpah's opening scene in The Wild Bunch (1969). Anyway what we have here is another telling of the Jesse James story, it's been told better before there is no doubt but this does have some interesting twists, the obvious one is the casting of four sets of brothers to play brothers: James & Stacy Keach are the James brothers; David, Keith & Robert Carradine are the Youngers; Dennis & Randy Quaid are the Millers and Christopher & Nicholas Guest are the Ford brothers. These all perform admirably but the novelty was unnecessary and doesn't enhance the film to any real extent. Hill adds two codas to the film and they tend to make it lose its way; the first is showing the murder of Jesse James and lastly the arrest of Frank. These could have been dealt with much better by other means and their inclusion leaves the film with a sense of over-indulgence. But overall it's an interesting addition to the genre.