10 Box Office Failures That Are Actually Brilliant

3. The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

You'd have thought that Brad Pitt could have have sold any movie, even a low-key western that opts to give its ending away in the title - and yet The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford failed to recuperate anywhere near its $30 million budget, proving that the public's appetite for slow, mediative and endlessly melancholic westerns wasn't quite there... even if Brad Pitt was the star! Despite it status as a well-known flop, however, Jesse James is one of the finest westerns in recent years - lagging pace and forced romanticism aside. What's mostly great about The Assassination of Jesse James is its realism - the wild west myth is deconstructed, as it has been so many times, but there's a lingering emphasise on accuracy, be it in the gunfights (people shooting at each other constantly miss, due to the badly-designed nature of the guns), or the lacking sense of bravado one might associate with "fun" westerns starring John Wayne. But it makes sense that this flopped; it's a difficult film, one unlikely to generate word of mouth buzz like other modern westerns such as Django Unchained.