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Jesse James, we learn in the opening voiceover, was a man with the common touch; a man with two incompletely healed bullet wounds in his chest, another in his thigh; a man missing the nub of his left middle finger; a man with a condition called granulated eye lids which caused him to blink more than usual.

Jesse James, we learn in the ensuing 150 minutes, was a man whose violent outbursts were contrasted by stretches of pensive meditation; a man who was deeply disturbed and unsettled; a man devoted to his wife and two children; a man who felt cornered, and threatened even by those in his gang; a man unable to deal with his own legend.

A string of high profile heists in the 1870s may have branded him a criminal by those he robbed and the families of the people he killed, but to many Americans who read about his exploits in sensationalised newspaper articles and dime novels, he was a hero — a modern day Robin Hood who stole from the banks and railroad companies that exploited the poor. He was America's first celebrity, idolised by young boys like Robert Ford.

Idealistic, needy, ambitious, obsessive, he was a nobody who dreamed of being as famous as his hero — and by the time Andrew Dominik's film rides into town, the 19-year-old has just taken the first step. A new member of the James gang, he's used flattery to slither into the outlaw's life. But their relationship is tenuous at best — an arrangement of convenience for the rebel who finds the adulation from Ford both amusing and troubling. Paranoid at the best of times, he humours the new recruit but barely disguises his feelings of disdain and distrust.

Gradually, even through the haze of adulation, Ford begins to realise that the special connection he imagined sharing with James wasn’t true. Essentially his adoration turns to anger and — as you might have guessed from the title — assassination.

It's a complex relationship — conveyed as much in knowing glances, intense stares, and distant gazes as it is in oblique dialogue — impeccably conveyed. Brad Pitt is suitably haunted and mercurial as the complex wild west hero, who never lets on whether he's aware of Ford's intentions. Did the devotee remind him of better times or his own ambition as a young man? Was he an adrenaline junkie who liked being in situations where death was possible. Or was he just taunting Ford?

Dominik doesn’t try to answer the question — the truth is nobody knows the answer — but Pitt's detailed, nuanced portrayal ensures that all are a possibility.

And yet, his performance is entirely overshadowed by Affleck's. Equally creepy and disturbing (like a modern-day celebrity stalker), he somehow still elicits sympathy as the man who was more than just a coward. The fear, envy, disappointment and his realisation that this is his chance at greatness are all in his eyes as he shoots an unarmed James in the back, in his own home.

But even as he delivers the fatal shot, and long afterwards as his own brief brush with fame (or notoriety) disappears, his position never shifts from hero worship. He never stops admiring the outlaw in a turn that makes Dominik's film utterly compelling.

Without it (and Pitt), 'The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford' would seem as long and cumbersome as its title. As it is, this character study canters rather than gallops, the pace slowed by beautifully artistic shots of open fields, empty rooms and the outlaw suddenly appearing from the dark or a billow of steam.

"Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them, rains fell straighter, clocks slowed, sounds were amplified," the opening narration tells us. Dominik shows us just that.