vague but thrilling

It’s hard to say whether James Keach has the charisma to play Jesse James, or if we buy Robert Carradine as part of the Younger Gang, or if Randy Quaid deserves more screen time than his more talented brother Dennis.


Probably not for all three but “The Long Riders” is essentially a casting stunt anyway. It brings together the two Keach brothers, James and Stacey as Jesse and Frank James, all three Carradines in David, Robert and Keith as Jim, Bob, and Cole Younger, and Randy and Dennis Quaid as the Miller cousins, Clell and Ed Miller.


Together they make up the James Younger Gang, who all turned to outlawing in Missouri shortly after the Civil War, holding up banks, stagecoaches, trains, and what have you while enjoying the spoils of their labors.


But the star of the film is not the gang but director Walter Hill, an expert gunslinger when it comes to material like this who knows how to stage the logistics of a brilliant shoot-out as much as he gets the fabled violence, bravado, and elegance of the Old West and how bad-ass cool anyone who’s seen a Western before believes it to be.


The boys spend much of their downtime drinking and romancing women- whores mostly because they ain’t the marrying kind- at saloons and hoedowns, which all have a sprightly step to them in part thanks to Ry Cooder’s rousing violin score and because of Pamela Reed, playing the fiery whore Belle Shirley, whose flirtations with David Carradine run the gamut from lustful to emotions far more possessive, jealous (on his part) and unwilling to be jerked around (on hers). At one point he even gets into one hell of a knife fight over her, circling around the bar with the man (James Remar) who would be her husband, a stocking clutched between both their teeth, as they go at each other with Bowie knives.


Expertly shot by cinematographer Ric Waite, the thrill of the action is very much matched by the stunning wooded area locations. In fact a scene where the gang is all holed up in a barn leading to a shoot-out with the Pinkertons looks about as authentic as it is breathlessly executed. And it’s hard to forget the finale ambush scene, which features so much crashing through roofs, horses getting turned over, and bloody gunshots that it’s by far one of the most stunning shoot-outs i’ve ever seen.


There isn’t much personality to the men of the gang- in fact it’s hard to even give you much in the way of personality traits that distinguish them apart. Stacey Keach is somber, James Keach is more dead-eyed somber. Of the men David Carradine looks like he’s having the most sardonic fun, sporting a shit-eatting grin on his face that suggests he wouldn’t change a thing about anything. Dennis Quaid plays the hothead yet he’s excommunicated from the group early in the film for that very reason.


Is the Younger-James gang something of a band of Robin Hood’s of their time? The ending brings about so many questions of loyalty between the different factions of brothers but doesn’t really go into any of those either. The film seems to be more on par with the “Tombstone” of its time and in that the action is as gritty and tough, and the characters as smirky and prone to posturing, as in that film. The performances are not as good at shading in some of the missing pieces but overall this is Western folk tale done with spirit, skill, and panache.