The Long Riders

The Long Riders is a 1980 American Western film directed by Walter Hill. It was produced by James Keach, Stacy Keach and Tim Zinnemann and featured an original soundtrack by Ry Cooder. Cooder won the Best Music award in 1980 from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for this soundtrack. The film was entered into the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. The film is notable for having cast four sets of actual brothers to play the four sets of brothers in the James–Younger Gang. Plot During the years following the Civil War, banks and trains become the targets of the James-Younger gang, who terrorize the Midwestern United States. The band of robbers is led by Jesse James and Cole Younger, along with several of their brothers. After getting antsy during a bank robbery, Ed Miller opens fire and kills the clerk, resulting in a shootout where Jesse is wounded. Jesse dismisses Ed from the gang; his brother Clell remains. Mr. Rixley, a detective from the Pinkerton's agency, is assigned to capture the outlaws. Rixley doggedly remains on their trail, accidentally killing a Younger cousin and the youngest James brother, and losing several of his men in the process. Due to his errors, the Pinkertons back off. Jim Younger, who initially courted a girl named Beth, is disturbed to find her engaged to Ed. At Frank and Jesse's younger brother's funeral, he convinces Beth to leave Ed and she eventually marries him. Clell Miller suggests the James-Younger Gang ride north in September 1876 to rob a bank belonging to "squareheads" in Northfield, Minnesota; word is out about them and the town has been warned by the Pinkertons.