Where this movie differs from your typical Westerns is that there is a bountiful amount of character development. To keep comparisons fresh, Assassination is nothing like Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, or even Unforgiven. Where those films focused more on brawling, gunfighting, and action, Assassination goes in depth into the character of Jesse James, Robert Ford, and some of the other members of the James gang. Of course this will seem dragged out when you're watching the movie, but there's special ways to make character development appealing to the audience. It depends on the look, the speech, and the emotion displayed by the actor. In a movie like this where there are several shots of Jesse just sitting or standing still, the story keeps going on because we're learning more about the character as we look at facial expressions, the way he breathes, the look in his eyes. We're subject to their raw emotion. We can feel the weight on their shoulders, minds. Movies are meant to be engaging to the audience. You have that here when you're either sympathizing with Robert Ford, or outraged by James' ruthlessness and vice versa. These are the movies that tense you up when you're wondering what's going to happen next, and when you care about characters and how they play throughout the rest of the film. This movie should have been considered for Best Film simply because it's an unbelievable performance on all counts by all characters involved regardless of the genre. People get caught up in length because they're expecting the next big bang, or next big kill. What they've failed to realize is that they're not wanting to watch acting anymore. The building block of film.