Kenneth Turan, in the LA Times, on TAOJJBTCRF:
"While a character like this -- someone who, all evidence to the contrary, fully believes he is "destined for great things" -- can perversely fascinate in a book, film is a different medium. Spending hour after hour watching this callow leech so worm his way into James' life that the outlaw himself says, "do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me," is close to torture.I saw "American Gangster" last night. It's a masterpiece. If you must see an "epic" movie this fall, make sure it's that, and not the one where Casey Affleck bats his eyes at Brad Pitt for three hours, and then (spoiler!) shoots him. Posted by Stephen Silver at October 5, 2007 05:00 PMEven worse is the considerable time spent with the rivalries and contretemps of the fatuous misfits and lowlife losers that are the best James can do for a gang in these last days of his career. While the women in this film, notably Mary-Louise Parker as Jesse's wife, Zee, have almost nothing to say, writer-director Dominik can't get enough of the painfully authentic period dialogue of his boys. But with the exception of Frank James (who has the good sense to leave the film almost immediately), these feeble nonentities come off as a whiny 19th century version of the guys from "Entourage," or maybe the "Dumb and Dumber" version of "Mean Girls." With guns."