James Gang Rides Again: The Long Riders

Everybody knows something about Jesse James and Hollywood has had a perennial love affair with bringing his story to the silver screen. In 1980, young director Walter Hill offered The Long Riders as his take on the legend of Jesse James.

The Long Riders offers several sets of real-life brothers to play the family members of the real James Gang. James and Stacy Keach play Jesse and Frank James; David, Keith, and Robert Carradine play Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger; Randy and Dennis Quaid play Clem and Ed Miller; with Nicholas and Christopher Guest playing the infamous Bob and Charlie Ford.

Director Hill (48 Hours, Red Heat, Wild Bill) does a good job of bringing the viewer to 1880’s Missouri, with all the dirt and rough manners associated with that frontier place in the years following the Civil War. It’s probably hard for us to imagine the importance of family ties back in those days as well as the resentment of the Northerners that always lay just below the surface of many of the Missourians, but Hill is able to impress upon us how a person would protect his despised own rather than turn him in for a Yankee ree-ward. Well, all except Bob and Charlie Ford, but I’m getting ahead of the story…

The James and Younger boys were guerillas in the border states prior to and during the Civil War. Following the Civil War, they continued their guerilla ways robbing banks, trains, stagecoaches, and the like. Hill put together an atmospheric view of the times culminating with the famed Northfield Minnesota Bank Robbery that broke the back of the James Gang. The staging and cinematography of the raid borrowed heavily from Sam Peckinpah’s justly famous “Wild Bunch” with its varying camera speeds, cuts, and unflinching view of violence - bullets impacting and blood spewing everywhere. Cole Younger (David Carradine) sustained some 20 bullet wounds himself and survived the debacle. The famed Pinkerton Detective Agency had put a man on the gang’s trail (James Whitmore, Jr.) that was ultimately able to convince gang members Bob and Charlie Ford to turn traitor and assassinate Jesse James.

Acting is good from the ensemble cast without any standouts other than David Carradine who appeared to be having fun. Frequent Hill collaborator James Remar also put in a memorable supporting performance. James Keach as Jesse James had the air of a cold blooded killer, which seems to fit the character more than the romantic but likable version turned in by Tyrone Power in Jesse James forty years earlier.

All in all it is a good depiction of the times, especially in terms of costuming and lighting with Hill’s eye staying close to a natural view unlike many of the cleaned up Westerns of old. The frontier-sounding score by Ry Cooder also adds to the authenticity of the production.

Fans of The Long Riders will also want to see The Outlaw Josey Wales, starring Clint Eastwood and Jesse James starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda.