Too Tough to Die

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In Jesse James, the metaphors are up front: this is a movie as much about modern celebrity as about the Old West. Pitt carries himself with the ground-down grace of a star who's weary of fame. "Jesse is very conscious of his own mortality," says Dominik. "He's imprisoned by the weight of his own myth." The man is fixin' to die and waiting to see who'll be his executioner. Jesse could be Vincent Chase on HBO's Entourage, and the gang his posse. But instead of bathing in the overspill of his limelight, they're jealous, rancorous. Instead of partying with the star, they want to kill him.

The movie, a postwestern in the style of Robert Altman's 1971 McCabe & Mrs. Miller, is elegiac in tone, for both the soon-to-be-late Jesse James and the genre he occupies. The silky cloud of steam from a train the boys are to rob instantly locates the movie in the mists of legend. Like Ford's 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dominik's movie says, "Print the legend," but adds, see that the legend is a lie.

But Dominik and Mangold, and the Coens and Miike, believe the form still has life in it. Their movies show it does. Working in a genre many think obsolete makes the filmmakers as alert and precise as the outlaws they depict. The pictures can't coast on the clichés audiences love, so they need a rigor and daring a buddy comedy or action movie doesn't. The demand on the director is different too: not to make a blockbuster, just a strong, true film. Maybe these movies will grant the genre a stay of execution and ensure that the western will damn well not ride off into the sunset or be carted off in Django's coffin.