As beautiful as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - a western with a new take on an old story - may be in its opening act, it's near impossible to herald the film as anything but an exercise in style. A style that itself wears thin very soon into the weighty runtime. The culprit isn't so much the lack of a script – Terence Malick has made art out of life and quiet for his entire career – more the lack of characters worth investing in. Brad Pitt's lack of presence has never been clearer than here, with his leading role nothing more than a series of brooding looks and disaffecting mood swings which serve only to add salt to the wound of Casey Affeck's solid but progressively tiresome turn as James' enfant terrible.

The final straw comes with the realisation that the piece, if intended as allegory for Pitt's own celebrity life, is one of the most self-indulgent works in recent memory. Proclamations that James is only human, that his heart beats like every other man and that society's misunderstanding is the reason for his personality split - venting violence to ease worldly pressure – are hollow rings and shallow rewards for viewers forced to trawl through hours of plodding exchanges and lingering compositions.

Whilst the cinematography is crisp and pleasant, it is shamed by a lack of purpose. The long take and emphasis on nature is perfectly valid, and often wonderful, for the film with a reason to give the audience space to breathe and reflect. The long take and the emphasis on nature is perfectly invalid, however, for the film without a reason to give the audience space to breathe and reflect. Andrew Dominik's approach would be noteworthy only if the film had themes more universal and powerful than shallow idolatry, which ironically is what the film indulges in for the first half of the show. It may be hailed as blasphemy to long for a more kinetic, fiery approach to the material, but the modern western already has its claims in the territory of serious drama with much more accomplished efforts such as Open Range, The Missing and The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada.

The turbulent rise and demise of Jesse James would be one much better told with as sharp an eye for entertainment as scenery, and that is the crucial problem with this ill-fated character study; it takes you by the hand instead of the throat as it walks you to the gallows.

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