I was tricked by Netflix in renting this tedious turkey of a Western; the acting (with the notable exceptions of Joe Pros Robert Duvall and Cliff Robertson) is atrocious, the actors reading their lines with all the conviction of press-ganged middle school students in a Christmas play. The plot of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is explained to us almost every point of the way Dukes of Hazzard style with a droning announcer who drains any suspense or subtly from the film, with the rest of the plot explained through the godawful dialog.

The story is your standard yarn of bank robbing planning and prevention, with lots of idiotic laughter and fiddle music to remind you it’s the 1800s. It’s the sort of movie where a hack actor explains the the behind-the-scenes financial drama of a bank to a group of total strangers in the street. Why? To advance the plot, of course. The best part of the film is when Jesse James (Robert Duvall) goes off his rocker and declares his intention to rob a bank in a preacher style. Beyond that, there isn’t much to recommend to this film; even a old timey baseball game is boring and accentuated with “wacky music” so you know when to laugh. An audience-insulting Western from start to finish, and a reminder of why I was turned off to Westerns in the first place. It’s an obvious ham-handed Hollywood attempt to capture the Acid Western zeitgeist (reaching its zenith in the early 70s), but the producers of this crap failed to realize The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is precisely the sort of cliche drek that these films were rebelling against. Avoid.

Tags: cliff robertson, great northfield minnesota raid, jesse james, robert duvall

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