A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Long Riders

The Long Riders (1980)
Dir. Walter The Warriors Hill
Starring: David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, James Keach, Stacy Keach

Oh the weary load of outlaw life...

Resting doesn't mean we don't watch movies around here. It doesn't mean we watch good movies, but we watch a fair amount, sleep through most and catch a few in completion.

I'd always had a guilty desire to see The Long Riders, even before I'd settled into my short, unstructured study of Jesse James in film. I remember when it came out and played on SelecTV and my dad saying in that kind of heavy make-a-subtle-point voice "It's all brothers playing brothers ... think about that."

Shoot, man! Shoot and do us all a favor.

So I threw it on Netflix and we watched it and it's pretty short, so we didn't fall asleep, and the sound was interesting enough to make us curious to wonder what will happen if it's ever translated to Blu-ray. But it was kind of a wisp of a movie that didn't really stick and I blame the Keach brothers for that because they wrote it and took the main parts as Jesse and Frank, and it was really hard to take any interest in what they were doing, on screen or off.

Now, I've seen Jesse as the noble bad man with a cause (Tyrone Power, Jesse James, Henry King 1939) and Jesse as enigmatic sex symbol with a torn shirt (Robert Wagner, The True Story of Jesse James, Nicholas Ray 1957) and Jesse as borderline psychotic control freak (Brad Pitt in my favorite, the beautifully shot The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Andrew Dominik 2007), but I've never seen Jesse so disinterested as he is in The Long Riders.

Oh the weary ... wait ... did I already say that? =sigh=

This is the leader of an outlaw gang??? He looks oddly like the love child of Buster Keaton and a stoned Methodist preacher. I guess Stacy Keach thought that as the bigger of the two he'd fit more into the role of protective Frank James, and he's right, but James Keach just doesn't pull it off as Jesse. He even looks bored robbing the train.

Stick 'em ... um ... whatever. Do what you want.

Then, when he's killed at the end he goes into it with obvious Christ-like imagery.

cue heavy music ... soft ... soft ... good

We're suddenly supposed to buy into Jesse as a Christ-like character? Where did that come in??? I'm no great religious genius, but I think someone who created a following that's lasted centuries had a little more charisma than this guy -- at least from what we see in this movie. Robert Wagner in the torn shirt, maybe, but not James Keach.

The good news is that he's shot by Nicholas Guest, with brother Christopher as Charlie Ford helping out.

These guns go to 11.

And that's really the only reason to watch the movie: the other people. If it wasn't for the other characters (and the sound, sure) we probably would have lost interest. Okay, and it's Jesse James, so I kind of wanted to see it through, but still, it's the supporting cast that made us ooh and ahh a lot more than the James/Keach brothers.

So you got your Carradines and your Guests, right, and then, in our non-brothers category you get your look at James Remar ("Warriorrrrrrrrrrrs!") as crazy Sam Starr, seen here bringing a knife to a gun fight with David Carradine.

Ajax vs. Kung Fu ...
this movie clearly needed more of these fabulous set-ups

And then you got your Quaid brothers, Randy and Dennis, as the Miller brothers, Clell and Ed. Randy gets the luckier of the two parts because he makes it all the way through to the ill-fated Northfield bank robbery.

Life draining out while canteen drains out -- get it?

But we lose Ed early on when he screws up a "peaceful" bank robbery at the start of the film, and that's kind of okay. This is just a year off of Breaking Away (1979) and Dennis is still pretty fresh to movies, but he doesn't have much to do anyway except get his girl stolen away by Keith Carradine (yeah, who would you do?) and look sullen when the gang dumps him.

first the gang, now my girl ... jerks.

But, what is cool about having Dennis fill-in here is that although they don't share any screen time, this movie also has Pamela Reed in her first movie as a saucy, wonderful Belle Starr. You just keep hoping for the scenes where she comes back and toys with David Carradine's Cole Younger.

Suitably dusky Belle can out drink or shoot any man. Girl power!

Belle and Ed would be married three years later in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (1983), and as Mr. & Mrs. Gordo Cooper they are much more interesting and worthwhile than they are separated in The Long Riders.

"Who's the greatest pilot you ever saw?"

The Right Stuff is a longer picture to get through, but even on couch rest days I'd stay awake for that one without as much struggle as I did with The Long Riders. Go with the astronauts over the cowboys, friends. Always go with the astronauts.