American Outlaws

Telling an old story with young actors has been quite successful in the past, Young Guns as a matter of point, but when a movie is made and two much is borrowed from those earlier films it becomes tiresome. Here we're given a twist to the stories of Jesse James and the origin of the James/Younger gang after the Civil War, but like the old dime novel of that era there's more fiction than fact.
This film has some very well done action sequences, but falls flat in the way of story substance, there's to much similarity to the Young Guns series to say that this was an entirely independent idea. Colin Farrell as Jesse James was a good choice but the problem he has is that the story turns him into some kind of American Robin Hood instead of the villain that he was. Two of the surprising roles that are in this film are that of Jesse's mother portrayed by Kathy Bates and that of Timothy Dalton's interpretation of the real life Allan Pinkerton. Both roles are small but very powerful and with these two high caliber actors in them these characters shine , where they might otherwise have been relegated to the scenery.
Sugar coating the past has never been a good thing, when Hollywood does it badly, after the truth has been put out there for the public for years they seem to lose money in the deal. I'm not saying that Young Guns did it any differently, but there it was done in a way that the audience still saw that outlaw side of the character. Unfortunately with this story the gang members are made to look like good guys from the very beginning, and with an intelligent audience it's just to hard to swallow when you know the majority of the story's false.