The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

source: The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

There are two reasons I watched The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid: Robert Duvall and Luke Askew. I like Lucas-Q as a character actor and of course, any Robert Duvall film is working a look. Unfortunately Luke Askew--playing Jim Younger--doesn't have a speaking role and spends the entire film with a cloth over his face to hide a terrible wound. Robert Duvall is adequate but he really chews the curtains in some of the scenes to such a degree it's almost embarrassing to watch. I don't imagine Duvall ever watches this movie. There is some terrible looping of the Pinkerton detective's dialogue, too. Overall, the film suffers from poor writing and budgetary limitations. The greatest drawback is the film doesn't have a position on anything. It sort of meanders around, padded in parts with pointless scenes, until the inevitable (and lackluster) climax and that's about it. Interestingly, one of the prostitutes is played by Valda Hanson, who was one of Ed Wood's stock actors.

Being a historian and a fan of great movies, I can overlook historical discretions when it comes to every detail exactly as it was, as long as the film isn't saturated in political correctness. The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid is a great movie, and from what I've researched, not that inaccurate. Cliff Robertson (Cole Younger) is the star, more so that Bob Duval (Jesse James), and that's OK, because it is a movie. I remember taking a beautiful girl to see "The Long Riders" in 1980, and I remember not really caring for it. Looking back, I know why. They just don't make them like they used to. Robertson, Duval and the gang in TGNMR look tough, tattered, their clothes worn and dirty, their beards real and not clipped to perfection. Their voices are those of men, not boys. There is no way in hell I will waste time seeing Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise try to convince anyone they are Jesse James. Even Kurt Russell, who I like, with that phony curled mustache in one of the Jesse James remakes can't convince me that he is anyone but a Disney actor with soft skin. From a historical perspective, this movie may get you interested in researching Jesse James, the War for Southern Independence, and that era. My buddies and I traveled to Minnesota for The Final Four and ventured over to Northfield for a day and rode the trail of the outlaws. We arrived at the bank, the same bank, at closing time. The lady was locking up and she refused to let us look inside. If only I had my 45 we could have re-lived that infamous day. My favorite part in this movie is at the whorehouse (Mankaty Kate's), where the boys are all dead tired, sleeping, snoring, but Cole is never completely asleep. His eyes are half open, then shut, then half open again, while there seems to be a slight wheezing sound. In the background is very mellow, eerie but nice soft chamber-like music. The music, along with Cole's state of mind and physical condition, all on screen together, make for a fantastic if but somber scene. Check out Inger Stratten as one of the whores with the sweetest voice. If you've ever been so dog-dead tired and gone through hell, you can relate to this moment. It is abruptly interrupted by gunfire. It's a good thing Cole never sleeps and wears a steel chest guard. There is a grim determination in each of these boys, being anti-union, refusing to surrender and knowing that each day could be their last. You have to think that if you were one of the boys, would you do the things they are doing in this movie and would you see things as they see them. My answer is "yes".

There are really nice things here. Duvall taken by the spirit and delivering visions of Yankee raids; his sycophant brother following him even to the toilet; Luke Askew's missing lip; the old woman pronouncing doom in cryptic rhyme; Duvall's escape in drag; Robertson shot 16 times. But Kaufman apparently didn't have the chops to know that Bruce Surtees was quietly destroying what could have been a pretty good little art picture. What should be a semi-psychedelic fever dream of distorted Americana looks like a drunken episode of Bonanza, crowded/blurry/badly framed two-shots all in brown. Half the film takes place in the woods, in Missouri, and it's not even green. The whole movie seems to have been shot with a single lens. Even the credits appear cheap and dated. No question, this movie looks as low-end and made-for-TV as any Aldrich or McLaglen Western of the same period. LONG RIDERS, a later, more traditional and visually interesting James Gang movie by Walter Hill, certainly is slicker in delivery. But NORTHFIELD, for all its art-school faults, at least reaches toward transcendence. In Kaufman's writing and direction is an attempt to commandeer the drive-in horse opera formula and ride it into 70s ambiguity. The bad guy heroes are sort of unheroic; the Pinkertons are a cartoon counterpoint; the dialogue is occasionally quite choice. But while this is my favorite screen investigation of Jesse James, the film as a whole does not rise above its weaknesses.

Although the central character of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger, Robert Duvall joins a great pantheon of actors that range from Tyrone Power to Brad Pitt in playing the legendary outlaw of the old west, Jesse James. Some say that the James/Younger gang were the last Confederates out there actively engaged in warfare against the invading Yankees on behalf of the south. This film certainly takes that position. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid took place in 1877 and was the biggest job attempted by the gang and turned into the biggest flop in their outlaw career. Word leaked out about the robbery and the Pinkertons and the local law enforcement were waiting. The incident is shown in just about every Jesse James film there is. The James/Younger gang remain populist heroes to this day in many quarters. They were an expression of outrage by a conquered people, the poor white class who saw land taken over illegally by Yankee managed railroads or foreclosed by banks with northern management they ultimately answered to. A decade later these people would find a voice in the Populist Party and if Jesse James hadn't been such a person of violence, he might have had a great career as a Populist politician, he was reputed to be that charismatic. Younger's a different story, his charisma as it were was a laid back kind. He's got two brothers to look after, Bob and Jim and wants to live long enough to get the amnesty promised by the state of Missouri. It's one of the reasons the James/Younger gang is operating as far north as Minnesota. That and the fact they can rob from Yankees if they have to rob at all. As is shown in the film, Missouri was debating an amnesty, but certain interests wanted to make sure that didn't happen. The gang is operating outside their home state, lest any outlaw activities interfere with the amnesty. And the Pinkertons want to nail them all before the amnesty ever is passed as an example. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is one fine western with two rugged leads and very realistic settings for the old West. Fans of that generation and younger should not miss this one.

This is a terrific film with an amazing performance by Robert Duvall. The cast is excellent and the direction by Philip Kaufman (THE RIGHT STUFF) is visceral and exciting. This film captures the energy of the real Old West. The film takes place in 1876 when the U.S. was just taking shape as a nation. Wonderful new contraptions are coming into being which fascinate the outlaws. Duvall plays the famous, often psychopathic outlaw Jesse James. Duvall is like a demon possessed and dangerous as a coiled snake. This film shows off what a wonderful actor he is. There is a rollicking energy to this often humorous and alternately tragic film that captivates the viewer. I cannot recommend this film enough. IT IS A

In spite of some memorable visuals, the result is confusing and surprisingly tedious. There is not one character/person you care about.

Riven by internal frictions and harried by the Pinkerton men, the James-Younger Gang is at a low ebb. One last big project is planned, a daring raid on the bank of Northfield, Minnesota. Outlaws have long been treated as folk heroes by Hollywood, but a particularly virulent strain arose with "Bonny And Clyde" and "Butch Cassidy" at the end of the 60's, then flourished in the early 70's, mutating into the 'realistic' western ("Dirty Little Billy", "Bad Company" etc). The present film stands squarely in that tradition. Cliff Robertson plays Cole Younger as an avuncular, pipe-smoking nice guy with a passion for machines. Robert Duvall, first-class as always, portrays Jesse James as a half-crazed, bible-thumping Southern zealot who can't accept that the Civil War is over. He regards robberies as military attacks on the perfidious North. His preacher-style oratory in the hot baths is a memorable sequence. In order for the viewer to sympathise fully with the robbers, the authorities have to be made to look bad. Accordingly, we see Pinkerton bribing the Speaker of the Missouri Legislature to ensure that the Coles and Youngers don't get their amnesty. Throughout the film, we are constantly reminded that the gang is 'only robbing from robbers'. The proprietor of Northfield's bank is shown to be a charlatan, and the town's posse is crueller and dumber than the gang which it is pursuing. 'Northfield' is a good-looking film. The music is exceptionally good, with neat bottleneck guitar and passages of calliope-style music, mimicking the steam organ which features in the story. "Our national sport, gentlemen, is shooting," we are told, and the film has some great gunplay. Watch out for Elisha Cook Jr in the cameo part of Mr. Bunker. There are also flaws. The baseball game is too modern in its styling... did runners really slide into the bases like this in the 1870's? And the game goes on too long. The extended joke, that fielders are sometimes clumsy, quickly turns stale. The townspeople call the crazy German guy 'squarehead', a term of abuse that surely dates from the First World War at the very earliest. However, despite these shortcomings, the film works. The dourness of unspectacular industrial Minnesota contrasts nicely with the romanticism of these vagabonds. The egotistical Jesse's struggle to supplant Cole is well depicted, each man reluctant to fight openly, but their contrasting leadership styles making conflict inevitable. These heroes who are not heroic populate a western which is not set in the west. The free-ranging nomads are trapped in the grey drizzle and brick structures of the MidWest, caught up in the midst of an Industrial Revolution which is sounding their death-knell.

Interesting movie has something of the rueful eccentricity of a Peckinpah movie, although it's told on a much more modest scale. The movie has a sense of transition, with expressions of wonderment at the new steam engine vehicles and even at the game of baseball - there's a sense of gun culture being pushed out and marginalized, although the town's crooked banker illustrates that the new age isn't going to be free of corruption. The structure also has an appealing oddity, illustrated by the band of pursuers on the train, monitored through the entire movie, only to turn up at the end after it's too late. Duvall is occasionally almost Apostle-like as Jesse James and Robertson gives one of his most flavoured performances as Cole Younger. The movie seems very much like a tentative first work and explores themes and ideas in a fundamentally very modest way, but the overall mood is quirky and distinctive and the trim ninety minutes running time makes it an appealing digression.

I always cringe when someone claims a particular substandard movie is the worst ever, but I am genuinely tempted to make such a claim for "The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid". While Cliff Robertson is fine as Cole Younger the rest of the cast is pretty much hopeless (give Robert Duval some credit for expending a lot of energy as he chews the scenery to an unimaginable degree). The real problem is the hopeless historical distortion and the early 1970's counterculture revision of history. This is especially unforgivable because the actual events were more interesting that the contrived garbage shown in the movie; these were portrayed a little more accurately in "The Long Riders", a better film. The "actual" events were fascinating so distortion and silly embellishment are totally unnecessary. If they can't provide a reasonably accurate retelling of the story then they should change the names and call it by its right name-"fiction". A genuine piece of crap, if there is any justice everyone associated with this mess is or soon will be roasting in hell.