Search - The Long Riders on DVD

Steve D. (Racepro) from LITHIA, FL
Reviewed on 11/30/2011...

This One Is A Classic!! This Western was a movie before it's time, outfitted with an all-star cast, it set a new standard for how Westerns are made today!! The true Western Fan, was used to a B-Movie type format, where action and story content weren't balanced out to give the movie goer a full effect movie.
The Long Riders however, was one of the very first that fulfilled that balance, sling-shotting the Western into a new era.

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

Peter Q. (Petequig)
Reviewed on 8/17/2009...

Love it...5 star. A great telling of an old Western tale. Pure genious in pairing the brothers/actors in real/reel life !

2 of 4 member(s) found this review helpful.

Anne K.
Reviewed on 11/2/2008...

This is one of my favorites. Killer cast and an exciting story based on true events. You don't have to like westerns to watch this movie. Never a dull moment. The old west is captured supurbly (is that a word?) Anyway.. Its one of the best movies of all time. Highly recommended.

6 of 6 member(s) found this review helpful.

Long Riders

Steven Hellerstedt | 11/07/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"
About once a generation a western appears that boldly announces it's telling history "as it really was" and generally reenergizes the genre. THE LONG RIDERS did that in 1980, although it got its history as wrong as did the earlier ones. Belle Starr is offered here as a notorious prostitute and lover of David Carridine's Cole Younger. Starr was never a prostitute, although she was an outlaw who gained posthumous notoriety when her exploits were exploited by an eastern writer. She didn't marry Sam Starr until Cole Younger was serving his second year in prison for his role in the Northfield robbery, so the film's mano-a-mano showdown scene between Younger and Sam Starr is pure hooey. On the other hand, Cole Younger DID receive 11 gunshot wounds during the botched bank robbery - a number, I guess, no movie would ever feel the need to exaggerate.

None of this is meant to find fault with THE LONG RIDERS. If I want to learn history I'll read a book. Movies are meant to deliver the emotional impact of the story in a manner accessible to the widest number of people. Rather than telling it like it is, these corner turning filmmakers deconstruct myths and rebuild them in terms more acceptable to modern audiences. The Pinkerton agents are treated more gently than might be expected and the James Gang is portrayed as just about what they were before the publicists got to them - not a modern day bunch of Robin Hoods, but a group of tough men who found robbery amenable and profitable.

THE LONG RIDERS is probably best remembered for its inspired casting of real brothers to portray the historical brothers who were members of Jesse James' criminal gang. Bearing fond memories of watching it twenty-five years ago, I was really looking forward to seeing it again two and a-half decades later.

Imagine my disappointment. James Keach, who plays Jesse James, gives one of the most wooden performances I'd ever seen. A smile never crosses his lips, an identifiable emotion never appears on his face. History books tell us the real Jesse James was a devil-may-care, gregarious type, much like Butch Cassidy, while Frank James was the taciturn one.

Beyond the action scenes and especially the final showdown in Northfield I feel THE LONG RIDERS is awfully slow moving and uninvolving.



"

An uneven guilty pleasure

Doug Vaughn | 05/08/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I don't know why I am such a sucker for this film. It is too long, uneven, very slow in parts and certainly doesn't provide a happy ending. But it is one of the most honest yet entertaining westerns I have ever seen. The qimmick of using the Keach brothers as Frank and Jesse James and the Carradine brothers as the three members of the Younger family (plus throwing in the Quaid brothers for good measure)works wonderfully well. Always picturesque, frequently violent and bloody, this film evokes the unstable time just after the Civil War when the James and Younger gang were at their height. A terrific contrast is drawn between the James men, who are depicted as dedicated homebodies when not at "work", and the Youngers who are depicted as boisterous hell-raisers. Pamela Reed as Belle Starr is a standout in an already excellent cast. When Cole Younger and her husband square off for a knife fight she just smiles and declares "You boys sure do keep me entertained." The same could be said for this film. It is by far the best Jesse James film ever made, and with its sound track by Rye Cooder, a pleasant experience to revisit every year or so."

Adult Western, Well Done.

Doug Vaughn | 08/26/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This appears to be a pretty accurate account of the James-Younger Gang, focusing on their Northfield, Minnesota bank robbery.The James and the Youngers are protrayed as outlaws who were influenced by thier civil war service in and around Missouri. They had killed and stolen in service to their cause and then kept it up after the war ended. But they are not shown in a particularly heroic light.Instead, they are shown as clannish desperadoes who are supported by the locals. David Carradine in particular does a good job as Cole Younger. The movie does a good job showing the peer pressure put on them after the Pinkerton people get their brother killed. It also shows the Ford brothers selling out Jesse James' life to the Pinkertons.It does leave out the part in Northfield where the citizenry supposedly went into a hardware store and began grabbing rifles off the shelves with which to repel the invaders.This movie gets gorey and gritty in spots, has cathouse scenes, and is not a "cowboy" movie to show to young kids."