April
17, 2001 | If you've got a hankering for a little Wild West action,
you would do better to giddyap over to your neighborhood video store
rather than take a hard ride with American Outlaws, the latest
in the seemingly endless stampede of Hollywood horse operas about those
celebrated bandits known collectively as the James-Younger Gang.
Specifically,
we're talking about Jesse James (Colin Farrell); his brother, Frank
(Gabriel Macht); another pair of siblings, Cole (Scott Caan) and Bob
Younger (Will McCormack); and their various partners in crime. Recycling
bits and pieces of historical fact and folkloric legend, American
Outlaws introduces these original gangstas as defeated but unbroken
Confederate loyalists who return to Liberty, Mo. after the Civil War,
hoping to resume their simple lives as farmers and family men. Unfortunately,
their homecoming is anything but peaceful: Railroad tycoon Thaddeus
Rains (Harris Yulin), backed by federal troops and Pinkerton agents,
is grabbing control of all land in the area, by fair means or foul.
A
few homes are burned to the ground, and a couple of innocent bystanders
- including Ma James (Kathy Bates), Frank and Jesse's big-hearted, Bible-thumping
mother - are killed. So the Jameses, the Youngers and some like-minded
friends strap on their guns and declare war on the railroad interests
because, well, a man's got to do what a man's got to do, right?
Such
is the stuff of legend - and, from time to time, very good movies. To
cite just a few of the best: Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda rode tall
and shot straight as, respectively, Jesse and Frank in Henry King's
classic Jesse James (1939), while Cliff Robertson made a charismatic
Cole Younger (opposite Robert Duvall's psychotic, cross-dressing Jesse
James) in Philip Kaufman's cult-fave The Great Northfield, Minnesota
Raid (1972). And, course, there was The Long Riders, Walter
Hill's ambitious 1980 epic, which cleverly cast bunches of real-life
siblings - assorted Quaids, Keaches and Carradines - as brothers bound
in banditry.
Unfortunately, American Outlaws ranks several rungs below these
and other exemplary films, and just a few notches higher than the notorious
1966 double feature of Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter
and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.
Taking
his cue from the jokey, once-over-lightly script by Roderick Taylor
and John Rogers, director Les Mayfield (Blue Streak) clumsily
attempts to reinvigorate the clichés of the Western genre by
rendering his larger-than-life outlaws as smaller-than-life delinquents:
Fun-loving, backslapping frat-house pranksters who just happen to rob
banks and, occasionally, kill people. (The body count is kept just low
enough to maintain audience sympathy and, more important, ensure a PG-13
rating.) To be fair, there's nothing quite as hilariously anachronistic
here as that stunning moment in Young Guns when Emilio Estevez's
fashionably coifed Billy the Kid leads his buddies into battle by growling,
"Let's rock!" But American Outlaws manages to be every
bit as foolish in other ways, particularly during lengthy shoot-outs
that owe more to John Woo than John Ford.
The
actors don't help very much. Irish-born actor Colin Farrell may be The
Next Big Thing - Vanity Fair claims as much, so it must be true
- but he's fatally short on commanding screen presence in what amounts
to the lead role. His Jesse James is such a petulant lightweight that
you wonder how he leads his horse to water, much less his fellow outlaws
to bank robberies. Scott Caan is oafish and obvious as the hotheaded
Cole Younger, Gabriel Macht is understated to the point of indifference
as Frank James, and Ali Larter is beautiful but hopelessly bland as
Zee Mimms, Jesse's formidable sweetheart.
The
most impressive of the supporting players - and the only good reason
to waste time on American Outlaws - is Timothy Dalton, the erstwhile
James Bond, who affects a thick beard and a thicker Scottish brogue
to play Allen Pinkerton, the detective agency chief charged with bringing
Jesse James to justice. Dalton infuses every element of his character
-- even the cliché of Pinkerton's grudging respect for the outlaw
he obsessively pursues - with a nifty mix of effortless authority and
sardonic cunning. Early in his pursuit of the James-Younger Gang, he
warns the railroad executive: "It's going to be a long winter!"
Later, he revises his bad news: "It's going to be a long spring!"
And it is. But without Dalton, American Outlaws would seem like
a much longer movie.