THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID
D: Philip Kaufman (1972) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Philip Kaufman (1972) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
Cliff Robertson, Robert Duvall, Luke Askew,
R.G. Armstrong, Donald Moffat, Dana Elcar,
Matt Clark, Royal Dano, Elisha Cook Jr.
Shrugging off a shot at amnesty from the Missouri state legislature, the James Gang rides north to rob a bank in Minnesota, with a railroad car full of hired guns riding after them. This covers roughly the same territory as Walter Hill's "The Long Riders", and while Jesse James is the outlaw in all the history books, the character who makes both films fun to watch is Cole Younger (David Carradine in "The Long Riders", Cliff Robertson here). Robertson's Cole is fascinated with modern technology. His favorite word, whenever he spies a new piece of machinery, is "wonderment," and a calliope, a steam-driven tractor, and a long-distance talking device just introduced by A.G. Bell all qualify as wonderments. (He's less impressed with an evolving new sport called baseball.) If Cole's got an eye on the future, Jesse's all about the past. As played by Robert Duvall, Jesse's a fanatic, still fighting the Civil War in 1876, on a mission not so much to rob banks as to kill Yankees. Cole will kill when it's called for. Jesse kills because he can. As much as an outlaw western, this is a portrait of America in the year of its centennial, specifically the rough but increasingly civilized Midwestern frontier. During an extended old-time baseball sequence that's as violent and unruly as it is extraneous to the plot, somebody tells Cole that baseball's now the country's favorite sport. Cole argues that America's favorite sport will always be shooting. Then he levels his rifle, draws a bead on a high pop-up, and blasts the ball out of the sky. The ball's ruined, and that's the end of the baseball game. Shooting wins.
