BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Justin Easton There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Robert J. Maxwell It's an engaging Western. Henry Fonda is Frank James in post-civil war Missouri. His brother Jesse is dead, killed by the Ford brothers and engineered by the railroad. Many of the characters are carried over from "Jesse James," a year or two earlier.Poor Fritz Lang. From the monumental "Metropolis" to Jesse James' less colorful older brother. Such was the fate of many who were escaping the Nazis. Lang's wife was Jewish but he was thought so highly of that he was asked by Goebbels to head the propaganda division of the Third Reich. According to Lang, his reply to Goebbels was, "I'm tickled pink," and then he was on the fastest airplane out of . He went on to film some very effective noirs in the 50s, including "The Woman in the Window" and "Scarlet Street." However, here he is, behind the camera on a sequel. And it's not bad. The script is proficient, though without the exciting action scenes of the forebear, but shot in the magnificent color that was characteristic of 20th-Century Fox Studios at the time. This movie is suitably dark but some of the studio's musicals were in such loud colors that they resembled animated cartoons.Anyway, Jesse James was shot in the back by the Bob Ford and his brother. Frank quickly dispatches the other ford but Bob remains an elusive target. In the course of his pursuit, Frank James stages his own death and assumes a different identity. In this peaceful guise, he runs into Gene Tierney, a woman of sass and principle, for whom saving a life is better than causing a death.It gets complicated but winds up a courtroom drama in which the plain-spoken Frank is being tried for murder. He's defended by the choleric Henry Hull, newspaper editor and lawyer. Hull shouts his lines, including a paraphrase of Shakespeare from Henry VI, Part 2, in which a revolutionary cries: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Frank James is found guilty and is drawn and quartered, his intestines spilling out, the giddy spectators splattered with blood. Just kidding. He gets off.It's WHY he gets off that's a little disturbing. The narrative is involving, but its values are those of "Gone With the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation." The Confederaly was "good" and the Yankees were "bad," and that's all there is to it. All the heavies are cowards. And they're the cause of all dysfunction. The prosecutor in the case, for instance, is a man who is being paid by the Yankee railroad. He's made ridiculous. The judge is biased, the jury is biased, the defense is biased, the audience is biased, and the viewers -- willy nilly -- endorse the notion that the Confederacy was good, partly because a man settled his own affairs, like shooting his enemies in the front instead of the back.Disregarding that, Henry Fonda does a nice job as a subdued ex bandit driven by family honor. Henry Hull's character has only one dimension but it's an amusing one. Gene Tierney is exquisite but has a voice that -- if a mouse could speak -- would sound like a mouse's.Treat it as fiction and enjoy it.

lugonian THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES (20th Century-Fox, 1940), directed by Fritz Lang, is a continuation to the 1939 blockbuster hit JESSE JAMES (1939) starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as the outlaw James brothers. Repeating its opening and closing credit score conducted for JESSE JAMES, along with its Technicolor splendor and location filming that served the earlier film so well, FRANK JAMES elevates Fonda from secondary character to top draw leading attraction. While this extension might have reused the services of JESSE JAMES director Henry King, it comes of a surprise in having, not Howard Hawks or John Ford whose best films happen to be westerns, but the European born Fritz Lang. Yet, under his watch, the result of THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES is every bit as good as the original.The fade-in begins with the closing minutes of JESSE JAMES where the wanted outlaw (Tyrone Power) gets shot in the back by his friend, Bob Ford (John Carradine) as his brother, Charlie (Charles Tannen) watches. Eliminating the eulogy given by Rufus Cobb (Henry Hull) that closed the original film, THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES opens its new chapter with newspaper headlines depicting the death of the notorious outlaw, and the disappearance of his brother, Frank James, after the Northfield robbery, now believed to be dead. Frank (Henry Fonda), however, isn't dead, but living a secluded farm life in the Ozarks under an assumed name of Ben Woodson. He's accompanied by the family farmhand, Pinky Washington (Ernest Whitman), and Clem (Jackie Cooper), an orphan teenager whom Frank had taken in following the death of his father. It is Clem who runs over to Frank with the news about Jesse James murder and the arrest of the Ford brothers. After learning the Fords were set free from the judge a half hour of the guilty verdict from the jurors, and having collected the $10,000 reward on Jesse, dead or alive, Frank breaks from his seclusion to take the law into his own hands by avenging his brother's killers. Along the way Frank and Clem, now acting as his tag-along sidekick, encounter Eleanor Stone (Gene Tierney), a reporter for the Denver Star, hoping for a good story or else her father Randolph (Lloyd Corrigan), owner of the newspaper, would send her off to college instead.Aside from the tobacco chewing Henry Fonda playing Frank James, others reprising their original roles from JESSE JAMES include the ever reliable Henry Hull (Major Rufus Cobb, editor of the Liberty Weekly Gazette still using the catch phrase, "Shoot them down like dogs"); J. Edward Bromberg (George Runyan, the railroad detective out to expose Ben Woodson as Frank James); Donald Meek (McCoy, the railroad president responsible for having the Ford brothers betray their leader, Jesse, and arranging for their pardon); and George Chandler(Roy, Cobb's typesetter). New of the cast include George Barbier (Judge Ferris); Eddie Collins (The Station Agent); Barbara Pepper (Nellie Blane, stage actress); and Victor Kilian (The Fanatic Preacher).For Gene Tierney's movie debut, she gets no special introduction in the credits. Only her name comes billed second under Henry Fonda, which is an honor for any newcomer. A dark beauty with girlish sounding voice reminiscent in both factors to an early 1930s actress, Sidney Fox (best known for 1932s "Murders in the Rue Morgue"), Tierney doesn't play a love interest but one interested in reporting the news that's fit to print. She does quite well in her first try as a movie actress, and would improve with each succeeding movie before reaching her peak with LAURA (20th Century-Fox, 1944).As with JESSE JAMES, THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES, with original screenplay by Sam Hellman, toys with the facts, resulting to better screen entertainment. While the first hour depicts on Frank's vengeance on the Ford brothers, with a tense moment having the Fords acting on a stage play "The Death of Jesse James" observe Frank sitting in the theater box looking down at them, the second half shifts to courtroom proceedings with Frank accused of a murder and Major Cobb acting as his defendant. Though Fritz Lang may have avoided borrowing from Henry King's directorial style from JESSE JAMES, interestingly, the courtroom segment comes as a sheer reminder to John Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939) also starring Henry Fonda, by using humor over tense action for the proceedings. Like King, Lang keeps the pace moving with exciting horseback chases and shootouts, something very much expected for any western.Though the second and last of the Frank and Jesse James westerns for the studio, this wasn't the last depiction on their lives presented on screen. Lippert Studios independently produced two totally different adaptations, I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949) and THE RETURN OF JESSE JAMES (1950), with the latter co-starring Henry Hull in a different character portrayal. Other numerous westerns on the Jesse and Frank James would follow for many years to come.Distributed to home video and later DVD, THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES consisted of cable TV broadcasts as Turner Network Television (1994-95); American Movie Classics (1999-2005); Fox Movie Channel, Encore Westerns, Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 27, 2012), among others. With this much television exposure, Frank James should become more legendary than his kid brother, Jesse. (***1/2)

classicsoncall This was an adequate sequel to the 1939 film "Jesse James", but not nearly as good as the original. To keep continuity intact, Henry Fonda returns as the title character, and other actors reprise their roles from the earlier picture as well. Particularly good was Henry Hull as the bombastic Major Rufus Cobb, along with John Carradine as outlaw Bob Ford.Except for the embarrassing fabrication of Western history, the film stands as an entertaining story and a nice showcase for the film debut of Gene Tierney portraying Eleanor Stone, a reporter for the Denver Star newspaper run by her father (Lloyd Corrigan). However I couldn't warm up to the casting of Jackie Cooper as Jesse James' grown up son Clem. I guess I'd seen him in just enough 'Our Gang' shorts to make him seem less credible as an outlaw here. One thing is certain, his death scene in the picture is one of the corniest I've ever seen, virtually throwing his head aside as he expires. It just didn't seem believable to me.One other comment I would make has to deal with the horses Frank and Clem rode during their getaway ride. They were lathered to such a degree that it made me wonder if that was really possible after a hard ride. But at least these steeds stayed on their feet, as opposed to the wild spills taken by the horses in "Jesse James". In that one, Henry Fonda's mount went over a cliff in a virtual somersault, and I would venture to guess, a stunt like that could never be duplicated again.

Spikeopath Frank James, after learning that the men who killed his brother, Jesse, have been pardoned, comes out of hiding to enact revenge.Following straight on after the ending of Henry King's 1939 Tyrone Power starrer, Jesse James, The Return Of Frank James sets its stall out from the off to entertain without giving much credence to history. Back by popular demand as Frank is Henry Fonda, who in turn is ed by the returning John Carradine and Charles Tannen as Bob and Charlie Ford respectively. Along for the ride and offering up petite beauty and innocence is Gene Tierney in her first starring role.Directed by Fritz Lang, who had cemented his glowing reputation with the likes of M & Fury, The Return Of Frank James is a solid if unspectacular Western entry. Certainly the dark theme of revenge is not to be sniffed at, nor is the strand dealing with the influence of the press. Whilst the California photography from George Barnes is appropriate and pleasing on the eye. It's just that the film, in spite of its fine production, feels like the cash in sequel it obviously is. It's a hard film to take seriously, which in a film dealing with serious issues such as revenge, is not particularly good really is it?!It's actually the jovial nature of it that stops it from veering towards the maudlin. Certainly the court case sequences are joyous and give Fonda and the team something to get stuck into. But it's an odd mix of a film, with its main allegiance difficult to really pin down. Yet in spite of my own protestations, it's a film I heartily recommend to those interested in light hearted Westerns, regardless of if that was Lang's intention from the off? It's also fair to say that those who enjoyed Henry King's far better first movie, will doubtless enjoy this sequel as well.Safe, solid and definitely enjoyable, but ultimately it's not very memorable. 6/10