The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)

Undescribable Perfection

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

With an amnesty vote pending in the Missouri legislature, a last attempt to nab the James-Younger gang leaves Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson) gravely wounded, prompting Jesse James (Robert Duvall) to try his luck at a lucrative out-of-state bank job, leaving Cole worried about his amnesty and hot on his trail.Indicative of Hollywood in the early seventies, this is slick, glib entertainment that takes a few shots at the establishment, though writer/director Philip Kaufman manages to do so without becoming smug and self-righteous (Robert Altman cough, cough), while remaining amusing and clever throughout and delivering a few good action scenes.Robertson (who also produced) portrays Younger as the real brains of the gang and plays him with a grin and a twinkle in his eye, while Duvall's Jesse is half-crazed and ignorant, though with a quick wit and a devil-may-care attitude that brings to mind his characters in Joe Kidd and Apocalypse Now.Great character actors like R.G. Armstrong, Royal Dano and Elisha Cook Jr. are always a welcome sight, while Luke Askew (who's third-billed despite never uttering a word!) went on to play a pivotal role in Frank And Jesse, another Jesse James movie a couple decades later.

One of the things that most impressed me about Philip Kaufman's take on the James-Younger gang's depredations when I was a kid was that he didn't make these guys out to be heroes: they were Civil War veterans who held grudges and did everything they could to make the Northern Invaders pay for what they'd wrought. The dark, dreary look of the movie fit its overall tone. It was interesting, too, that Kaufman focused more on Cole Younger than Jesse James (who, as played by Robert Duval, struck a chord most creepy as the often bible-thumping but murderous son of a preacher). A unique western then, and just as compelling a film now. Hop on board for the ride: you won't be disappointed.

Just saw this movie and must say without Duvall's performance this might rank as one of the worst Westerns ever made..I loved the snow capped mountains around Northfield and the hokey mustaches on some of the characters.. (some even looked like they were ready to fall off). The baseball game scene appeared to be just a way to lengthen the movie and had nothing to do with the actual raid. The chasing around by the Pinkerton group was almost comical and hard to watch. The only thing I did appreciate was Duvall's and Robertson's performances, but unfortunately neither warranted any type of awards because of the low budget antics of the screenplay. This very, very low budget film is not worth the time....

There are really nice things here. Duvall taken by the spirit and delivering visions of Yankee raids; his sycophant brother following him even to the toilet; Luke Askew's missing lip; the old woman pronouncing doom in cryptic rhyme; Duvall's escape in drag; Robertson shot 16 times. But Kaufman apparently didn't have the chops to know that Bruce Surtees was quietly destroying what could have been a pretty good little art picture.What should be a semi-psychedelic fever dream of distorted Americana looks like a drunken episode of Bonanza, crowded/blurry/badly framed two-shots all in brown. Half the film takes place in the woods, in Missouri, and it's not even green. The whole movie seems to have been shot with a single lens. Even the credits appear cheap and dated. No question, this movie looks as low-end and made-for-TV as any Aldrich or McLaglen Western of the same period. LONG RIDERS, a later, more traditional and visually interesting James Gang movie by Walter Hill, certainly is slicker in delivery.But NORTHFIELD, for all its art-school faults, at least reaches toward transcendence. In Kaufman's writing and direction is an attempt to commandeer the drive-in horse opera formula and ride it into 70s ambiguity. The bad guy heroes are sort of unheroic; the Pinkertons are a cartoon counterpoint; the dialogue is occasionally quite choice. But while this is my favorite screen investigation of Jesse James, the film as a whole does not rise above its weaknesses.