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.