AMERICAN OUTLAWS [ 1/2]
Silly cable fodder. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sanitized violence). At the Empire, the Kips Bay, the Village East, others.
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YET another nail in the coffin of the Western genre, “American Outlaws” does for Jesse James what “Young Guns” did more than a decade ago for Billy the Kid.
That is, repackage clichés and stereotypes with attractive young performers in a simple-minded script that panders to the teen audience. (Both films have the same producer.)
Following in the footsteps of Tyrone Power, Audie Murphy, Robert Wagner, Robert Duvall and many lesser lights, hunky Irish actor Colin Farrell (“Tigerland”) plays a Jesse who doffs his shirt more readily than a model in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue.
It’s history be damned in this cartoonish version, which replaces the cold-blooded killer of legend with a roguish Missouri Robin Hood who takes to robbing banks to spite a land-grubbing railroad baron (Harris Yulin, who himself played Jesse in 1979 made-for-TV movie).
“Just because we’re robbing a bank, there’s no reason not to be civil about it,” Jesse lectures his men.
There is a lot of back and forth between Jesse and the railroad’s hired gun, the legendary Allan Pinkerton. He’s played with a brogue and a wink by Timothy Dalton, the only participant who seems to have any idea what a crock this movie is.
Mostly, though, director Les Mayfield (“Blue Streak”) and the credited screenwriters, TV vets Roderick Taylor and John Rogers, seem interested in the frat-boy antics of Jesse and his men – including Cole Younger (Scott Caan), who’s jealous of all the publicity the press-savvy Jesse starts getting for the robberies.
There’s also a halfhearted romance between Jesse and a doctor’s daughter, played by an utterly incongruous Ali Larter.
The utter lack of period realism – the sanitized action looks like something out of a ’70s telefilm – extends to all the performances, except for Gabriel Macht’s as Jesse’s brother Frank, who’s what passes for the brains of the operation.
Kathy Bates turns up briefly as Ma James – and she is a lot funnier in this purportedly serious role than in this week’s comedy “Rat Race,” even if her character in “American Outlaws” gets killed by the railroad men.
She sticks around just long enough to observe, “The good Lord’s a bit shorter than I reckoned,” a line that convulsed the audience at a screening I attended.