10 Box Office Flops Much Better Than Their Reputations

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

Budget: $30 million

Worldwide Gross: $15 million

Far from the fast-paced gunslinging of other Wild West actioners like Tombstone, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford lives up to its title: it's incredibly long and it doesn't concern itself with being particularly snappy.

Some viewers get a little fidgety from the way this character study moseys along for nearly three hours without much in the way of big action spectacles. It's a quasi-epic, really, one that's more concerned with the psychology of its characters and the occasional dip into surrealism than it is with aggrandizing the mythical figure of its titular characters.

This is the thinking man's Western, and it's just as rewarding to watch Brad Pitt become dangerously wrapped up in paranoia as it would be to watch him in a shootout atop a moving train.

Speaking of Pitt, The Assassination Of Jesse James remains one of his most undervalued performances to date, though Casey Affleck is certainly no slouch, either. Their interactions are entrancing, to the point where you have to wonder why these two never got to work more closely in the Ocean's trilogy.