I cavalieri dalle lunghe ombre

As Sam Peckinpah's 'The Getaway,' Walter Hill's 'The Long Riders' almost elevates cinema violence into an art form…

Visually, 'The Long Riders' contains much that is stunning, even mesmerizing: the green Missouri scenic landscapes; the train robbery sequence; the stagecoach heist; the crossing of a wild river; but there is no question that it is the scene of the gang's disastrous foray into Northfield, Minnesota - that highlight this film… These specific episodes give 'The Long Riders' its rhythm, power, spectacle, and excitement…

With his slow motion 'terror shootout,' Hill seems to impress his viewers by showing them an inventive montage of high-level gory violence… But Hill's most wonderful sequences are those that were the most reserved: the wonderful moment when Frank is cutting the hardest wood with a forest ax and his brother Jesse, walking with his fiancée, attempting to settle down and raise a family…

Hill may have a reputation for being a tough guy, but his best screen moments (in "Hard Times", "The Warriors", "Streets of Fire") are the ones in which he allows his romantic tendencies to slip through, when he gives his characters the dignity that means so much to them… Hill tries to debunk the American myth that Western gunfighters were "heroes," and to show these embittered guys for the 'rough men that they really were.'

Hill's real intention is to present us with a gang of four families of brothers, and get us to accept them on their own terms, in their own brutal world… The men of 'The Long Riders' are at their most dastardly at the beginning of the film when Ed Miller (Dennis Quaid) indiscriminately shoots an innocent clerk, but for the rest of the film - one by one - Hill reveals their better, more 'human' sides… We further get to appreciate them as we compare them to the awful men around them; next to the Pinkertons killing a simple-minded 15 year old boy, they come out best, the 'good guys.'

To Hill, good and bad aren't on opposite sides of the coin; they share the edge

Bravo! Great fun. The idea of actual brothers portraying the James', Youngers, Millers and the Fords was fabulous - but then the Keachs, Carradines and Quades are so outstanding they really took it all the way. It felt like a genuine moment out of an American West history book. And Pamela Reed as Belle Star - what a tough, sexy "whore". Loved it.

I know, calling it "the true story" is a bit much for any film, but I have my reasons. There have been dozens of films about Jesse James, before this one and since, but as a history buff I choose this one as my favorite. Most movies on the subject either make Jesse a misunderstood hero or the villainous target of some (usually fictional) lawman. This movie was called "revisionist" by some critics when it was released, but the great thing about it is that it just tells the story. It uses a series of lovely little vignettes, each one of them historically verifiable. There are failings, to my mind the slow-motion shootout being the biggest, but on the whole it captures the feel of the period, the dress, the idioms ("I would toss the shotgun away!"), pretty much everything. It doesn't make them good guys, far from it, but it does take pains to show why their neighbors loved them and hated the pinkertons.

Not the best western ever, by a long shot, but almost certainly the best movie on the subject.

This film was historically correct in how it showed the attitudes of the times. I saw this film finally after reading a book attempting to explain why American history, including the Wild West years, has been so violent. I was amazed how accurately the film showed those reasons in the Wild West. Mostly men, few women, lived in that part of the country then. The West was spacious and spectacular but also boring, leaving men with little to do but get drunk and play a mouth harp. Also, many of the tough guys hailed from the post-Confederate South. In the film, after taking the long, boring train ride north to a town in Minnesota (to the tune of a mouth harp,) they encountered well-dressed, prosperous Scandinavian-Americans in the streets. These people were barely intelligible as they mocked the long riders. When our anti-heroes arrived at the bank, they discovered what the townsfolk were saying. What they said to the lone teller revealed they were from the South. I was mesmerized by this part of the film and hope others were, too.

In the Missouri, after the civil war, the James & Younger gang steals banks and trains, and are chased by the Pinkertons. This movie is a very different western, showing the outlaws as human beings, having families, raising children. Walter Hill uses the Carredine, Quaid and Keach brothers in real life to perform the former bandits and it is a great attraction in this film. The music, arranged and composed by Ry Cooder, fits perfectly to the story. However, the characters are not well developed, maybe because of the quantity of lead actors versus the running time, and the story loses the explanation of the motives for the behavior of the bandits, being cruel while robbing and very close to their families, being good sons, husbands and friends. Anyway, the performance of the cast is excellent and the movie does not disappoint. My vote is seven.

Title ('Brazil'): 'Cavalgada dos Proscritos' (Ride of the Proscribes')