gilligan1965 I love how the makers of this movie use sets of 'American brothers in real life' to depict sets of 'American brothers in real-old American history!'David, Keith, and, Robert Carradine portray the Younger Brothers; James and Stacy Keach portray the James Brothers; Dennis and Randy Quaid portray the Miller Brothers; and, Christopher and Nicholas Guest portray the Ford Brothers - great casting!This is an excellent movie from start to finish! The acting is excellent...as is the direction; the music; the sets; the settings and scenery; the costumes; etc., and, especially the action - the action is exemplary!"The Long Riders" is directed by Walter Hill ("The Warriors"), who is a protégé of the exUS Marine "Master Director" of movie-war, -battle, and, -violence...Sam Peckinpah; and, he obviously learned a lot!This is a great movie if you're into extreme and realistic westerns such as "The Wild Bunch" and, "Tombstone."I highly recommend this movie to those whom are! :)

rod-ruger Too many reviewers extol this western. Apparently those folks have not seen The Wild Bunch, Silverado, the many Eastwood spaghetti westerns, or other excellent westerns. Or, positive reviewers simply have no taste. I rented Long Riders on Amazon. I fast forwarded through the dancing, extraneous bar scenes, family gunk, blabbering, etc. This 90 minute movie easily condenses to about 20 minutes. The rest is fluff. If you are determined to watch it, check it out of your library for free. Even then, you will waste your time. The movie wasted its stars and offered simplistic dialog. Most of the violence was clearly written in to attract the action freaks. Wild Bunch had a lot of violence. However, it all seemed a logical part of the movie.

virek213 The American West has provided an endless amount of true-life stories that have become legends of our nation's history. Inevitably, of course, this means that men that are branded as "outlaws" have become a part of all that. One such gang of outlaws was the one led by Frank and Jesse James that terrorized a large chunk of the Midwest in the years following the Civil War, and right up to the first years of the 20th century. That legend, unsurprisingly, has seen its share of films being made by Hollywood. But perhaps the most provocative of the bunch is the one made by action film stalwart Walter Hill at the turn of the 1980s. That film was THE LONG RIDERS.This take on the venerable outlaw legend is notable for having sets of brothers play the outlaws: Stacy and James Keach play the James Brothers'; the Carradines (Keith, Robert, David) are the Youngers; the Quaids (Dennis and Randy) play the Miller Brothers; and Christopher and Nicholas Guest portray the Fords. During the 1870s and 1880s, these men rack up a series of felonies so long and so brutal that they become oversized legends of their time, and quickly become the focus of the equally legendary Pinkerton detective agency (the frontier forerunner to the FBI). But the methods the Pinkertons use to hunt down the James/Younger boys are not only unconventional, but even criminal at times themselves, earning the scorn of a lot of people, especially those close to the boys in the states of Missouri and Tennessee. The end result is a blood-soaked affair that climaxes when the gang attempts to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, in a raid that only nets them a lot of bloodshed since it was all set up by the Pinkertons and that the entire town was waiting for them. All three of the Youngers are so badly wounded that the Jameses abandon them. Those that are not wounded are eventually captured by the Pinkertons. Only the Fords were ever offered a deal: to turn state's evidence and track down the James Brothers, which they indeed took.Made on what was a fairly sizeable budget for a Western ($10 million), THE LONG RIDERS did, however, score quite well at the box office; and as a result, the film was perhaps the last great Western to be a hit before the monstrous critical and box office debacle of HEAVEN'S GATE came along at year's end in 1980, all but decimating the Western as a genre. Hill and his crew were sticklers for authenticity, and it shows in every frame of the film, with each set of acting brothers doing convincing turns as the outlaws, and with Pamela Reed giving a fine turn as soon-to-be-outlaw cowgirl Belle Starr, a loose associate of the James/Younger gang. Given the period in which it was made, no one should be surprised that the outlaws are seen as the heroes, and the Pinkertons as more or less the heavies (since their methods of hunting down the gang are terribly unethical at times). And since Hill wrote the screenplay for director Sam Peckinpah's 1972 crime thriller classic THE GETAWAY, and loosely studied under that director, no one should be shocked either that THE LONG RIDERS is a fairly violent film, with bloody shootouts rendered in slow-motion (though Hill's editing style is not as cascading, nor quite as memorable, as Peckinpah's was for, say, THE WILD BUNCH).Filmed primarily on locations in northern California, Texas, and Georgia, THE LONG RIDERS benefits greatly not only from its casting and its period authenticity, but also from the rustic, down-home country/folk music score by Americana legend Ry Cooder, who would work again with Hill on films like STREETS OF FIRE, SOUTHERN COMFORT, TRESPASS, JOHNNY HANDSOME, LAST MAN STANDING, and GERONIMO: AN American LEGEND. It is sad that the Western genre had basically entered its twilight by the time THE LONG RIDERS was released, and that HEAVEN'S GATE (released, ironically, by the same studio, United Artists) would all but bury it in the ground for a long time, because this film has a lot to recommend to it. It belongs squarely in the traditions that both Peckinpah and Sergio Leone set forth in the 1960s, that in which the demarcation between black and white was really quite gray, and where right and wrong were determined by the participants, and not a half-baked sense of morality. Hill, who can sometimes be an uneven director, nevertheless understood that better than most, which is a big reason THE LONG RIDERS is one of the best of the latter breed of that most distinctly American of film genres.

alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) The story of Jesse James is the richest source of material for westerns. There is so much written about it and only a small part of it was shown on the screen. 'The Long Riders' keeps to the same part of the story as most other films: what happened shortly before Northfield, Minnesota and a bit after. I wish a more complete film would be made about it, starting with the civil war and ending after the trial of the Ford brothers, also showing the alleged involvement of the Governor of Missouri in the cowardly killing of Jesse. The film has great moments: the "handkerchief" fight between Cole Younger and Sam Starr where each man has to hold on his mouth a part of a handkerchief, while they fight with "Bowie" knives, a fight that was probably inspired by "Kansas Raiders"(1950), the night before Northfield with the members of the gang and their women, the beautiful landscape with the group riding their horses. The Carradine brothers as the Youngers are superb and so are Randy and Dennis Quaid as the Millers. Same for Pamela Reed as Belle Starr. I cannot think of a Frank James that can compare to Henry Fonda. Stacy Keach does his best but there is something lacking. James Keach underplays Jesse. It is not a bad performance, far from it, but from what I read Jesse was more outgoing than Frank, who was the guy who wanted no publicity.The shootout at Northfield would have come out better without the slow motion scenes.