Delayed Reaction: The Long Riders

The Pitch: Four sets of actual brothers play four sets of brothers for a James-Younger gang story.

The Jesse James story has been done to death. No one is going to argue with that. I've seen many of the more recent stories: the excellent The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the entirely forgettable American Outlaws. Jesse James, the character has over a hundred credits on IMDB. In short, we know the story.

So, if I'm to be enticed by yet another Jesse James story, there needs to be a hook. The Long Riders has one of the most successful gimmicks I've ever come across: they cast brothers for all the roles: James and Stacy Keach, David and Keith (and Robert) Carradine, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Christopher and Nicholas Guest. And it does appear to part of a studio scheme. Basically, the brothers all wanted to work together, so they did. That alone makes this pretty interesting. Nearly 40 years later, what's impressive is that all those brothers are still pretty recognizable names (Stacy more than James, Christopher more than Nicholas, etc. but still).

The problem is that the gimmick also gets in the way. There's a few too many characters and stories to keep up with. At some point, I gave up really trying to track what's going on with each of the 8-9 brothers. (It probably doesn't help that the characters I knew the most about going in - Jesse James and Robert Ford - were played by the two actors I recognized the least - Stacy Keach and Nicholas Guest). Once it gets to the botched Northfield robbery and the falling apart of the James-Younger gang, I enjoyed it a lot.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend