Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is widely considered to have the best cinematography of the 21st century, but moviegoers barely noticed when the movie opened in 2007 and grossed $3.9 million in the U.S. and just over $11 million worldwide. These are dire numbers when your production budget is $30 million. And yet, critics have remained on “Jesse James’” side for over a decade now. Variety hailed the film as “one of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise,” adding, “A ravishing, magisterial, poetic epic that moves its characters toward their tragic destinies with all the implacability of a Greek drama, this film is a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood’s oldest and most durable genre.”
