The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972) is a "revisionist" take on Jesse James and Co. that just doesn't work. It's a remarkably odd and disjointed film that is inconsistent in tone and pace, and ruins a potentially great story with goofy irreverence.

The Missouri State Legislature is about to issue a pardon of Jesse James (Robert Duvall), Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson) and the rest of their gang, but the conniving of the Pinkerton detective agency scrubs that idea. Jesse and Cole then decide to launch one more job: robbing the huge bank at Northfield, Minnesota, "the largest bank west of the Mississippi." Cole and Jesse infiltrate the town, and even get the greedy banker (Robert H. Harris) to help them by convincing townspeople to deposit money in the bank. The robbery itself goes off horribly wrong, and the James-Younger gang splinters as a trigger-happy posse pursues them across Minnesota.

For Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), making a "revisionist" Western means being irreverent, goofy and silly, while missing anything resembling a point. In this regard it's closer to nonsense like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean than The Wild Bunch: for all the detail and gritty violence, it's really just empty, self-deprecating fluff. The film has its moments but adds up to very little; it seems too impressed with its own "cleverness" to work as a Western, and never seems able to settle on a tone.

Kaufman rehashes the old James legend with little criticism, with one interesting frill: Cole is the brains of the gang, while Jesse is a psychopath who thinks he's still fighting the Civil War. His depiction of Northfield as a den of capitalist depravity is very much of its time, its scheming bankers swindling the dopish townspeople out of money, and inadvertently assisting the soon-to-be bank robbers. The movie lays the Robin Hood schtick on thick, with Jesse killing Yankee soldiers and an abusive landowner, and the Snidley Whiplash-type Pinkertons, but showing Jesse as a murderous nut rather kills the message. But this is only part of the problem.

The film has a broadly comic edge which works only fitfully; the humor is cartoonish and silly, with a distinct absence of wit. A lengthy baseball interlude goes on way too long, albeit with a funny pay-off. We get endless scenes of the greedy, gormless and gullible townspeople swindling or being swindled, and haphazardly tracking down the gang, hanging a few innocent men for being at the wrong brothel. Cole spends a lot of time marvelling over "wonderments" of modern technology: a running gag with a calliope has a nice, plot-appropriate payoff, but otherwise it's an obvious message impressed upon us once too often. There's certainly the potential for laughs but it falls flat: the bleak amorality is ill-served by Keystone Kops goofiness and Kaufman's sophomoric script.

Kaufman's direction is another problem. For all the rich period detail and the occasional stylish moment, the direction is bland and uninteresting. The pacing is awkward, the narrative disjointed, and Bruce Surtees manages only a handful of nice shots. Even the shootouts are poorly staged, with the titular robbery a bland anti-climax. At least The Long Riders, for all its faults, had some well-staged action scenes.

Cliff Robertson is solid, and his thoughtful, subdued portrait of Cole is arguably the film's highlight. Robert Duvall is ridiculously hammy, chewing scenery like a starved Lionel Barrymore. The supporting cast is generally good, with Luke Askew (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), R.G. Armstrong (Ride the High Country) and Matt Clark (Jeremiah Johnson) playing Jesse and Cole's cohorts, and Donald Moffat, Royal Dano (Man of the West), and Elisha Cook Jr. (Shane) as various townspeople.

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is a bitter disappointment. Perhaps those with more tolerance for oddball goofiness in Westerns would enjoy it more; God knows I've been the minority opinion many times before. Still, it has little of value to offer - not thematic material or interesting violence or humor that's actually funny - and proves an unfortunately poor entry in the Western genre.