The Long Riders

The Long Riders (1980) is an American western you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Walter Hill. The film's signature move is its casting: actual brothers play the outlaw brothers — David and Keith Carradine as the Jameses, Stacy and James Keach, Dennis and Randy Quaid as the Millers. It sounds like a gimmick. On screen it reads as blood.

Jesse James and his crew have been hitting banks and railroads across the Midwest long enough to collect a reputation for it — folk heroes to some, outlaws with a price on their heads. The Pinkerton agency closes in, and the men tracking them have been told not to come back empty-handed. Alliances inside the gang start fracturing before the law even gets close.

Hill strips the mythology down. The gunfights are short, the violence lands without ceremony, and the Northfield ambush that ends the gang's run is cut with a cold efficiency that feels more honest than most western shoot-outs. This is a film about how a legend outlasts the men who made it. Stream The Long Riders (1980) online on iFILM.