The legend of Jesse James

© Warner Bros

Do you see Jesse James as a vicious psychopath?
The film picks up during the last year of his life and he certainly was coming from a place of paranoia, most of it justified. I'd argue that the paranoia consumed him and certainly was responsible for a lot of his erratic action. It's true that while there is the Robin Hood myth to him which was based in truth, and which he did help perpetuate, it's also true to say he was a ruthless killer before the moment where the film starts.

Why does Jesse let himself get shot at the end?
This is well-documented in the book (on which the film is based, ed.). Historians argue over it. There's curiosity about it. The fact is he gave the gift of the gun to his would-be assassin and the very gun that would kill him days later and the fact that he took his gunbelts off at the moment of the assassination, which he never did. The first theory is that he had full knowledge of what Robert Ford or the Ford brothers were capable of and were after, and was taunting them and was going to take them out at a later time. And it was a bad gamble that he lost. The other argument is that he was unhinged, he was weary of this life on the run and that it was a puppeteered suicide, conscious or unconscious. It remains ambigious and I couldn't pretend to know.

Do you consider this movie a Western?
It's probably misleading as far as the genre we understand. It's better to say a psychological drama. Andrew has called it a gangster film. It's hard to come up with one category that accurately describes it.