The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

Interesting movie has something of the rueful eccentricity of a Peckinpah movie, although it's told on a much more modest scale. The movie has a sense of transition, with expressions of wonderment at the new steam engine vehicles and even at the game of baseball - there's a sense of gun culture being pushed out and marginalized, although the town's crooked banker illustrates that the new age isn't going to be free of corruption. The structure also has an appealing oddity, illustrated by the band of pursuers on the train, monitored through the entire movie, only to turn up at the end after it's too late. Duvall is occasionally almost Apostle-like as Jesse James and Robertson gives one of his most flavoured performances as Cole Younger. The movie seems very much like a tentative first work and explores themes and ideas in a fundamentally very modest way, but the overall mood is quirky and distinctive and the trim ninety minutes running time makes it an appealing digression.

Philip Kaufman's first major-studio film was one of many interesting but not very commercially successful (the major exceptions being "Little Big Man" and "Soldier Blue") revisionist westerns in the early 70s. Like "Bad Company," "Dirty Little Billy" and others it's more interesting conceptually than it is in execution, despite good performances and some flavorful period atmosphere (notably during an early, rough, messy baseball game in a cow field). But the narrative thrust is somewhat diffused, the psychological insight not esp. deep, and for the most part the violence is routinely handled. The result is a consistently interesting historical drama but not a particularly suspenseful or exciting one, which is odd given the extreme eventfulness of the "James Gang's" criminal career.

Aspects of this story were chronicled with vastly more focus and force in the recent epic "The Assassination of Jesse James" (which was, lamentably, also a total commercial flop). "Great Northfield" is worth seeing for Kaufman fans, among others, but he certainly hit closer to the bullseye with his subsequent "The White Dawn," "The Wanderers" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" before graduating to big-budget cinema with "The Right Stuff."

Honor among thieves is carried to the extreme in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid". Showing compassion for victims of corrupt banks, with swift retribution, the gang is still fighting the Civil War in Minnesota. Gradually being overwhelmed by progress, these outlaws look quite out of place. The story is told in a linear fashion, with no annoying flashbacks. Robertson and Duvall are surrounded by a believable supporting cast, that looks the part. My only objection is a couple scenes go on entirely too long, and the film would actually be better off without the interminable baseball scene. Worth seeing for the performances and authentic feel of the movie. - MERK

There are some very interesting moments in this movie. The performance by Cliff Robertson is indeed very good, and I think the movie raises some interesting points in its portrayal of the James/Younger gang as a metaphor for the final death rattle of the old south against the modernizing north. However, this movie can't seem to decide between a comedic tone or an ironic and cynical one. I would say it succeeds in its more serious moments, but the comedic sections are very contrived.

I went to college in Northfield, and I was glad to see my alma mater represented in the film (before its name was changed to Carleton). I became pretty familiar with this raid after attending Northfield's annual "Defeat of Jesse James Days" festivities four times. Surprisingly, the actual raid itself is portrayed fairly accurately, with the proper body count and roughly similar series of events, although some details are different. I liked the irony the filmmakers added with the incident of Cole Younger fixing the rifle that was later used to snipe at his gang members. Oh yeah, and you gotta love those snow capped mountains that surround Northfield (yeah, right), and the whorehouse full of buxom Scandanavians!

Riven by internal frictions and harried by the Pinkerton men, the James-Younger Gang is at a low ebb. One last big project is planned, a daring raid on the bank of Northfield, Minnesota.

Outlaws have long been treated as folk heroes by Hollywood, but a particularly virulent strain arose with "Bonny And Clyde" and "Butch Cassidy" at the end of the 60's, then flourished in the early 70's, mutating into the 'realistic' western ("Dirty Little Billy", "Bad Company" etc). The present film stands squarely in that tradition.

Cliff Robertson plays Cole Younger as an avuncular, pipe-smoking nice guy with a passion for machines. Robert Duvall, first-class as always, portrays Jesse James as a half-crazed, bible-thumping Southern zealot who can't accept that the Civil War is over. He regards robberies as military attacks on the perfidious North. His preacher-style oratory in the hot baths is a memorable sequence.

In order for the viewer to sympathise fully with the robbers, the authorities have to be made to look bad. Accordingly, we see Pinkerton bribing the Speaker of the Missouri Legislature to ensure that the Coles and Youngers don't get their amnesty. Throughout the film, we are constantly reminded that the gang is 'only robbing from robbers'. The proprietor of Northfield's bank is shown to be a charlatan, and the town's posse is crueller and dumber than the gang which it is pursuing.

'Northfield' is a good-looking film. The music is exceptionally good, with neat bottleneck guitar and passages of calliope-style music, mimicking the steam organ which features in the story. "Our national sport, gentlemen, is shooting," we are told, and the film has some great gunplay. Watch out for Elisha Cook Jr in the cameo part of Mr. Bunker.

There are also flaws. The baseball game is too modern in its styling... did runners really slide into the bases like this in the 1870's? And the game goes on too long. The extended joke, that fielders are sometimes clumsy, quickly turns stale. The townspeople call the crazy German guy 'squarehead', a term of abuse that surely dates from the First World War at the very earliest.

However, despite these shortcomings, the film works. The dourness of unspectacular industrial Minnesota contrasts nicely with the romanticism of these vagabonds. The egotistical Jesse's struggle to supplant Cole is well depicted, each man reluctant to fight openly, but their contrasting leadership styles making conflict inevitable.

These heroes who are not heroic populate a western which is not set in the west. The free-ranging nomads are trapped in the grey drizzle and brick structures of the MidWest, caught up in the midst of an Industrial Revolution which is sounding their death-knell.