The Long Riders

The whole idea of this film is in the casting. The brothers of the James-Younger gang are played by four sets of actors who are actually brothers: James and Stacy Keach as the James brothers; David, Keith and Robert Carradine as the Youngers; Dennis and Randy Quaid as the Millers; and Christopher and Nicholas Guest as the Fords. The idea came from the actors, not the director. In the early 1970s, while making a television film about the Wright brothers with his brother Stacy, James Keach thought of doing the same thing with another famous pair, Jesse and Frank James, initially as an off-Broadway play. It gathered momentum in 1974 when Keach worked with the youngest Carradine, Robert, on another television film, about the Hatfields and the McCoys. Walter Hill directed. It opened on 16 May 1980, and the style of its raids, slowed and stretched, became a Hill signature. Who it is for: viewers who like the hard western revival of the late 1970s and crime narratives built on brotherhood. Who it is not for: anyone after historical accuracy. The film is openly sympathetic to the gang and largely skips the political context of post-Civil War violence.