Brad Pitt: Scuzziest man alive

Family man
Are Pitt’s best movies behind him? Maybe. He seems bored now, and keeps making noises about retiring. He wants to start a family. Ladies, the line forms outside Hollywood.

In the meantime there’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” which is a good choice for Pitt in this way: For once he’s not the most beautiful creature in the film. Even women look at Angelina Jolie and go “Damn.” But it’s another ironic, low-key performance. It’s his “Ocean’s” character as an assassin, stuck in a loveless marriage, trading quips with lips more famous than his.

More promising is the announcement that Pitt, a son of Missouri, is scheduled to play one of Missouri’s most famous sons, Jesse James, in a film based upon Ron Hansen’s novel, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” Why is this promising? Because it’s a chance to undo the damage of the glory-seeking Achilles. In Hansen’s book, Jesse James comes off as a man who does the deed for the deed itself and not because of how the deed will be perceived. It’s the coward Robert Ford who confuses appearing with being, and who, as a precursor to various 20th century assassins, kills his idol in order to become his idol. One could call him the first 20th century man. James, meanwhile, has both feet planted firmly in the 19th century.

Maybe Pitt does, too. At the least, it’s his chance to act quirky and off-kilter and scuzzy again. About time.

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