The Long Riders

Starring: David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, James Keach, Stacy Keach, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, Kevin Brophy, Harry Carey Jr., Christopher Guest, Nicholas Guest, Shelby Leverington, Felice Orlandi, Pamela Reed, James Remar, Lin Shaye
Directed by: Walter Hill
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Thriller, Drama
1980

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary:The Jesse James gang commits a series of robberies while trying to stay one step ahead of the law.

Review:

Tim: I was in the mood for a Western, realizing it had been quite a while since I'd last seen one. After a good bit of searching, I finally settled on 1980's The Long Riders. It had a good cast, received good reviews, and it wasn't a film of which I'd never heard of. I'm a bit perplexed why so many critics liked this movie. It's a dull, utterly forgettable Western with almost no compelling performances.

The biggest attraction of this movie is that all the brothers in the story are played by real life brothers. That's pretty sad as far as "biggest attractions" go. You have the Carradines, the Keachs, the Quaids, and the Guests. None of them are especially great, but I guess it's kind of interesting to have real brothers play these brothers in a boring movie?

Walter Hill has always been an up-and-down director. For everyone good movie he's made- like Brewster's Millions or 48 Hrs., there's a Last Man Standing or Bullet to the Head. This movie kind of falls in the middle, but the lower end of the middle. I honestly never cared about anything that happened in this movie. None of the characters were very compelling. The story was sluggish and dull. Outside of a few great action sequences, there's just not much here worth our time and attention. That makes a relatively short film (1 hour, 40 minutes) feel far too long.

It felt like there was no charisma or excitement from the cast. I know the Keach brothers are responsible for the film being made in the first place, but they are woefully miscast as Jesse and Frank James. Stacey Keach is a good actor and did a few interesting things with Frank, but James Keach delivers one of the most flat, uninspired performances of such a legendary outlaw. I couldn't believe how little I cared about his stoic, sleep-inducing character here. I actually like Stacey Keach, but his performance as a whole left too much to be desired. Both Keachs never give us a reason to care about the James brothers. This effectively sinks the entire movie. Their bad performances are too bad from which to recover.

The Carradines were a bit better. David Carradine was always a fascinating person. I didn't care about his character, but he was at least trying. He's not the most expressive actor, but it was a big step up from the Keachs. Keith Carradine was enjoyable as well. Both men contributed to the movie with their performances. I don't remember Robert Carradine- he didn't make much of an impression. From the whole cast, I was most excited that the Quaids were involved. Unfortunately, Dennis Quaid doesn't do much of anything in this film. It was a big disappointment to see such a good actor relegated to such a pointless role. Randy Quaid has a little more to do, but outside of one or two nice moments, doesn't have a ton of interesting things to do. Christopher and Nicholas Guest were both pretty bland as well. I did enjoy Pamela Reed's strong performance, and James Remar was solid in one scene. As a whole, the cast looks super strong on paper and their performances as a whole were underwhelming. When so many actors seem bad, you have to wonder what was happening with Hill's direction.

There are a couple of good robbery scenes in the film. The train robbery was decent, although it was surprisingly devoid of real excitement. The shootout at the end is the highlight of the film. The slow motion scenes work well. I absolutely loved the shots of the horses jumping through windows, with the glass shattering around them. Those were great. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is just dull. It's characters who seem uninteresting talking about things that aren't very compelling. Yes, this is a stripped-down version of the story. It might get some benefit from being truer to life than the larger-than-life portrayal of these outlaws that we often see. However, in this case, being truer to life made these outlaws boring. I have no idea how critics didn't see this.

Walter Hill's film isn't terrible, but I was pretty disappointed in it. I sat through it, but had so little fun, learned so little about the characters, that it all felt like a bit of a waste of time. The Long Riders (also, a terrible name for the film) isn't a good movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Jesse James, The True Story of Jesse James