68
Metascore
32 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThe nervy style of this newfangled Western, with its eerie, insinuating score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is so effective that long after Pitt and Affleck have left the screen, emotional disturbance lingers like gun smoke.
- 100The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasA peculiar and destabilizing tone that's far from the standard Hollywood oater, but entirely fitting for two larger-than-life characters fulfilling their roles in history.
- 90VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyOne of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise. It's a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood's oldest and most durable genre.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversArtfully exciting and compulsively watchable even at a butt-numbing 152 minutes, the film makes good on the promise New Zealand writer-director Andrew Dominik showed with "Chopper" in 2000.
- 83Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerI wish this movie wasn't so purposefully elegiac and attenuated – at times it's like a middling Terrence Malick fantasia – but it's well worth sitting through.
- No one in the movie is entirely right in the head, least of all James, whose rapidly disintegrating sanity provides Pitt with his juiciest role since "Snatch," one he chomps into with all the relish of a guy who’s been playing suave leading men for too long.
- 63ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliIt’s far less engaging than the recent "3:10 to Yuma" remake and concentrates more on the details than the broad picture.
- 60Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanAlthough not as radically defamiliarizing as Jim Jarmusch's avant-western "Dead Man," Jesse James has the feel of an attic ransacked for abandoned knickknacks.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThis fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.
- 50The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisMr. Pitt is himself a supernova luminary, of course, and part of the attraction of this film is how his celebrity feeds into that of his character, adding shadings to what is, finally, an overconceptualized if under-intellectualized endeavor.