What do they mean bad is good again? The only way they can make Jesse James good is by taking a small piece of history and twisting it, tweaking it a bit more and straight out lying and then we have an American Hero. This is exactly what director Les Mayfield and writer Roderick Taylor do in American Outlaws. Yes I know that there are dozens of Jesse James movies that canonize him, glorify him and basically say that being an outlaw in the wild wild west was hero status, but the only part of the story they got right was he did participate in a renegade military service during the Civil War (he was a confederate) and he robbed banks and trains after the war. This does not make a hero and Hollywood is giving a whole new generation of kids the idea that Jesse James was a good man. Colin Farrell (The War Zone) plays the charismatic Jesse and he does his job well. In fact if I didn’t already know that Jesse just shot people for the pure pleasure of killing I would be inclined to believe this version of the James Younger gang.

Jesse, his older brother Frank (Gabriel Macht, Simply Irresistible), his cousins Cole Younger (Scott Caan, Gone in Sixty Seconds), Bob Younger (Will McCormack, Boiler Room) and Comanche Tom (Nathaniel Arcand) return from the war to find the railroad taking over their farms. Cole gets into trouble with the law and his friends come to his rescue but are then forced into hiding. The railroad and the Pinkertons burn a few farms and the boys are forced into getting even. The rest of the story is about the head of the Pinkertons, Allan Pinkerton (Timothy Dalton, License to Kill), tracking down the James Younger gang and ending this rampage on the railroad. The timeline is all wrong and writer Roderick Taylor even decided he did not like the birth order and names for the Younger family so he switched those around to meet his own storyline of Jesse James. In fact everyone in history knows that Jesse and Frank James’ mother died long after Jesse not shortly after the Civil War. This writer needed to change that part of history to give an honorable reason for these boys to resort to crime and revenge on the railroad.

Also in this film is Kathy Bates as Ma James, Ronny Cox as Doc Mimms, Ali Larter as Zee Mimms (Jesse’s future wife) hey that part of the story is correct, how about that, Terry O’Quinn as Rollin Parker and railroad tycoon Thaddeus Rains (Harris Yulin). I enjoyed this movie purely on the action, humor and acting alone. What took away from the entire picture was the blatant historical inaccuracies that drove me nuts. If you know zero about Jesse James and want to enjoy a western action movie then by all means this movie is for you and I give American Outlaws a six on the About-Movies.com scale, but if this is not your cup of tea then I would stay away from this movie and see a western with Antonio Banderos, like Desperado.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:47:47 AM

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