Search - The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid on DVD

Teddy B. (tigerted) from TUJUNGA, CA
Reviewed on 6/10/2009...

The true story of the actual bank robbery by The James Gang.This is the 70's version and it's done well( Not as great as Walter Hill's 1980 Version-but entertaining.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

THE OTHER GREAT JESSE JAMES FILM

Andrew Mangravite | 10/22/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Philip Kaufman's version of the last days of the Younger Brothers was made a bit before Walter Hill's "The Long Riders," and it suffers from being hyped as a serious action film when it is, in fact, a black comedy. Robert Duvall's Jesse James is so deliciously over-the-top in his self-righteousness and his faux-piety that he tends to obscure Cliff Robertson's turn as the bemused rationalist Cole Younger who finds too much of life "a wonderment," while Jesse just shoots at it and runs.

If Hill's film is about family and ties of blood, Kaufman's film is about greed and double-dealing raised to an art form. Everyone, except pious, mad Jesse is for sale in Kaufman's world. The Missouri state legislature can be bribed by the railroad to cancel an amnesty bill. Cole Younger plots with a venal banker to con the "good people" of Northfield, Minnesota out of their savings, then plans to rob the banker. The citizens of Northfield think nothing of cheating like mad to defeat a visiting baseball team from St. Paul and form the ultimate "shoot first" posse once the James and Younger gang presumes to raid their town. Northfield is the sort of civilized place where it's O.K. to pelt a madman with stones, but definitely bad form to shoot him. When the Missouri boys take on this group of respectable Northern burgers they take on much more than they bargained for."

QUIRKY, ATMOSPHERIC GEM

Robin Simmons | Palm Springs area, CA United States | 10/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this little known and mostly forgotten gem of a western that takes a genre and a myth and plays with all the quirky elements. No movie can reproduce historical fact -- not even a documentary. I love the feel of the film and the rough around the edges style. It's like life -- sometimes funny and sometimes violent. This is a very American film about legendary characters who in life had already become somewhat mythic. And that's what this exceptional film is about. Recommended."

An Overlooked Gem

Archmaker | California | 07/15/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Ain't it a wonderment?" Phil Kaufman uses the framework of the James/Younger Gang's disasterous raid at Northfield Minnesota to create a unique and witty revisionist Western. Full of nice touches like an early, rough & tumble baseball game in a cow pasture, steam caliopes & tractors, and other period details. Wry humor in the hypocrisy of the banker & townsfolk, and in Robert Duvall's self-righteous, manipulative, psychopathic Jesse James and Cliff Robertson's laconic, intelligent, reflective Cole Younger. Well cast in all departments, nicely photographed in the gritty, wet, McCabe & Mrs. Miller fashion, with a similar slant on history. No idea why Maltin was muddled."