American Outlaws
© James C. Hess
What would Howard Hawks, John Ford, and even John Wayne think if they were alive still and saw what passes for a Western today?
All of them could swear a blue streak. I suspect their collective response would be to think up new words for the context of the aforementioned blue streak.
Rightly so. "American Outlaws" invokes a certain response and it isn't--I assure you--a positive, favorable one.
Then, again, maybe that's how you're supposed to respond to idiocy such as "American Outlaws". And when you do the anti-gun crowd points and cries 'See? See? That's what happens when people have guns!'
Wrong. "American Outlaws" is not what happens when people are allowed the right to bear arms. "American Outlaws" is what happens when people have no standards for their entertainment and will watch anything.
(Yes. I have said that before. I will say it again and again until someone within the Hollywood machine actually listens and produces a movie or film I can watch without getting mad for being taken for seven dollars and fifty cents admission.)
"American Outlaws" fails. For a number of reasons. One of which is thus: It doesn't know what it wants to be: A socio-moral tale in the tradition of Peckinpah? A cliche-heavy melodrama in the style of John Ford? A black-and-white fable meant as homage to The Duke?
The identity crisis is the least of the problems here. The major one is the story itself: The gang formed by Jesse James and Cole Younger shortly after the Civil War. Basically this is a story well-known. But for reasons unknown instead of just telling this story a subtext of sorts has been included: Anti-globalization and economic isolationism. (If you will: The gang are the protestors seen recently en masse at Seattle, Sweden, Genoa.)
Now. To make this subtext work (sort of) a motive of sorts, supposedly based in historic fact, is given: The railroad is coming through and the gang in question doesn't want it.
Why? Such technology will bring progress, economic prosperity, change, evolution, Good Things.
According to the nonsense that would pass for logic and reason here it is because Jesse and Frank almost lost their mother when Pinkerton tried to blow up the James farm. (Fact: While it is true Pinkerton was hired by the advancing railroads to blow up dust farmers like the James it is not true what resulted: Ma James did not die. She only lost an arm.)
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