The last eighteen years in the life of Jesse James, showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill's raiders, his career of banditry with his brother Frank and the Younger brothers, and his attempt to lead a peaceful life after the disastrous attempt to rob the bank at Northfield, Minn. Biopic loosely based on the last 18 years of Jesse James' life and focused on the relationship between brothers Jesse and Frank James. Every re-telling of the Jesse James story has been flawed. This picture has neither the carelessly cobbled script of "The Long Riders" nor the Robert Duvall version's annoying quirkiness and skewed morality. However, it is a highly selective narrative omitting much of the suffering caused by the Jameses and with several outright distortions of the historical record. For example, when he was shot by Robert Ford, Jesse James was in the process of assembling a new gang, not about to retire to the life of a farmer as depicted here.<br/><br/>Robert Wagner is appropriately youthful in the title role. As brother Frank, the impossibly handsome Jeffrey Hunter has little to do but acts well. Agnes Moorehead plays Mrs. Samuel, the matriarch, as too saintly for my taste. But portraying a media-savvy Cole Younger, Alan Hale leads a particularly able supporting cast including, as an honorable Union soldier, the father of contemporary star Kurt Russell.<br/><br/>The narrative is anchored to the disastrous expedition to Northfield, Minnesota. One nice touch, copied in a later retelling, was the inclusion of a Swedish-speaking actor to play one of the two town residents killed by the gang. Frank and Jesse James, farming brothers and bitter strays in the years following the Civil War, turn to a life of crime. After about 15 minutes of random shooting and killing, this remake of Henry King's 1939 drama "Jesse James" goes into corny flashback mode to fill us in on the reasons behind Jesse and Frank's slide into destruction (with a voice-over from their frail mother on her deathbed!). We get to see Jesse romantically baptized in the river alongside his girlfriend while the church congregation looks on, this just before the James boys call their posse together with plans of robbing their first bank. Screenwriter Walter Newman cribbed a great deal of his work from Nunnally Johnson's earlier script (which is also credited), yet the caveat that these proceedings are based on fact is too tough to swallow. Robert Wagner, his crop of glossy copper hair boyishly tossed to one side, is almost pitilessly miscast as Jesse; never finding the right tone of voice or the proper emotional inspiration for the role, Wagner is the laziest incarnation of a movie outlaw in some time. The rest of the cast–talented Fox contract players–do what they can, but this project is stillborn. *1/2 from ****
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