A six-shooter only holds six shots, so you couldn’t use it to shoot holes in all the movies about Jesse James. But few of those films are of the caliber of Walter Hill’s up-to-date oater about the daring exploits of the James gang. Formed in the aftermath of the Civil War, the gang, a loose affiliation of the Brothers James, Younger, and Miller, gained folkish notoriety for their bold raids on those corporate carpetbaggers, the banks and railroads, then plundering the reaches of Missouri. In a casting coup, genuine siblings were rounded up to play the desperadoes—the Brothers Carradine, Keach, and Quaid bring the subtlety of inbred gestures to their portrayals. Hill is after the stuff of legend, so his horse opera unreins the operatic: the story is built around pastoral tableaux, punctuated by stylized bloodshed—this is Americana bearing the brand of Peckinpah and Arthur Penn. Picturesque yet lethal, The Long Riders reminds us that rustic innocence is as terrifying as it is rapturous.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy Keach Sr., James Keach. Photographed by Ric Waite. Music by Ry Cooder. With David, Keith, and Robert Carradine, James and Stacy Keach, Dennis and Randy Quaid. (96 mins, Color, 35mm, From MGM)