Myth, reality, and Hollywood are fairly evenly matched in this film about the James-Younger gang’s failed attempt to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, in September 1876. Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger takes center stage from the more often romanticized Jesse James, played here by Robert Duvall. As a corrective to all that romance, Duvall’s Jesse is more than a little whacked out – and cold blooded.
The film correctly shows them all as Confederate guerillas still fighting the Yankees a decade after the Civil War had ended. In the film, their reputation as heroes results from resistance to the land-hungry railroads, robbing trains and sharing the proceeds with the poor. No less a figure than Alan Pinkerton himself is enlisted to bring a stop to them. The film gives him credit for paying off the right Missouri state legislators to prevent a populist effort to grant amnesty for the boys. While speculative and oversimplified, the film shows that writer-director Philip Kaufman had looked at some history books before writing his script.
Cliff Robertson’s pipe-smoking Cole Younger is a congenial outlaw. Intelligent and reflective, he’s fascinated by new technology. A steam tractor on the streets of town stops him in his tracks with wonder – or “wonderment,” his favorite word. However, he does not see the appeal of baseball when he happens upon a game. “Our national sport is shooting,” he says, “and always will be.”History tells us that the gang rode into Northfield wearing long coats to hide their guns – and looking like cattlemen in this community of Scandinavian immigrants. But the robbery didn’t go as planned because of a time lock on the bank’s vault. A bank employee and a bystander in the street were shot dead, and two of the gang were killed as the citizens fired on them during their escape from town. The gang then split up and only the James brothers got back to Missouri. The Youngers were caught by a posse and sent to prison.
