It's 1881 and when Brad Pitt swaggers into view, dressed from head to toe in black, we know we are in the presence of a superior bastard. The star of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a member of the James Gang and one of America’s most ambivalent myths.

“When Jesse walks by even the rain falls slower” muses the narrator, while listing the facts of the outlaw’s life: “granulated eyelids” (shingles), two bullet wounds, a missing middle finger on his left hand, 17 murders, chronic insomnia, countless robberies, and an undying hatred of the Union. Even Jesse’s leather-faced brother, Frank (played by Sam Shepard), is wary of his younger sibling’s chilly charisma. Their conversations never get warmer than the business in hand, which is staking out steam trains on Blue Cut Mountain at the beginning of winter.

There is an unstable side to Jesse that doesn’t square with the southern manners, immaculate outfit, neat beard, or the secret church-going wife and two kids. The baleful blue eyes are too hard; the belly laughs are too hollow. One of his frightened cronies pleads with Jesse not to put a bullet in a railway guard’s skull when he has already bludgeoned the defenceless employee to a bloody pulp. “Don’t ever tell me what I can or cannot do” says Jesse mildly. It’s this icy civility, mixed with raging moments of pure Hyde, that makes Pitt’s 34-year-old outlaw such a magnetic villain.

The brilliant irony of Andrew Dominik’s film is that Jesse James is a man who is balled and chained by his own infamy. Seven years ago, the precocious New Zealand director assembled a similar thriller around the exploits of a notorious Australian nutter, Chopper Read, in a wonderfully raw biopic called, naturally enough, Chopper. The Assassination of Jesse James is a far more unnerving film because the hypocrisy runs much deeper. James is a front page icon in every five cent scandal sheet, yet the most hated man in America.

We know he is going to die because – title apart – Bob Ford is spookily infatuated with the outlaw. Casey Affleck’s 20-year-old Bob has a shoebox full of newspaper clippings under his bed. He knows Jesse’s height and boot size, the kind of guns he carries, the cigars he likes to smoke, and the scent he wears to bed. James is fascinated and repelled by Affleck’s shiny green eyes and shy smiles. “I can’t figure out if you want to be like me, or be me ” James mutters as Ford greedily watches his naked mentor take a bath.

There’s something uncomfortably sensual about the way Pitt humiliates the young poke. It’s like watching a bully sink his spurs into innocent flesh, until you realise that brutal tests of loyalty keep James alive. The outlaw’s uncanny ability to sniff out lies pumps the drama. But the gang is falling apart, and the mounting price on his head is proving far too tempting.

James can’t escape his own myth. The paranoia works on Pitt like a disease; he looks haunted and ill. The practical jokes where he wraps a knife around a loyal throat no longer raise howls of laughter. But his death is still a trembling shock and Ford’s fleeting glory after putting a bullet through his hero’s skull quickly sours.

The film, though, takes an age to fetch a conclusion. A little judicious cutting would not go amiss. Even so, this is a beautiful parable about fame and murder.

Watch the trailer

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• DVD

• Oscars

• Bollywood

Editor's choice

• The top 10 fan versus band scuffles
• Mamma Mia! The first review
• Times critics' 20 best films for kids