The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid

Running time: N/A

Hold your horses! We've been wrong about them all along. The Jesse James gang wasn't a band of desperados, but a conglomeration of dispossessed small farmers and natural-born populists. In fact, it wasn't their choice to be outlaws, but a tag hung on them by ''the establishment.'' Philip Kaufman's classic film tells the REAL story of the gang. In fact, it shows that Jesse James wasn't even the brains of the pack, but that Cole Younger made the decisions. James gained his reputation based on his short-temper and outbursts, which eventually led to the gang's downfall. Following the gang, Kaufman creates an exquisite story with complicated and believable human beings. It's difficult to label The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid as a western. Voted the best film of 1972 on many critics' picks, Kaufman's carefully researched depiction of the end of the gang steps outside of the genre into what has been labeled "Americana," and whose subject examines "the American polarity between domestication and violence." --Mike Rabehl