DVD Artwork
3:10 to Yuma
(Lionsgate)
Review by Adam Tracey
Westerns aren’t my bag. It just isn’t a time period or a genre that suits my fancy. That is not to say I don’t watch them or even like them, because I do, but there are only two westerns I love and by love I mean they have an absolute replay value (if I may bastardize the English language for a moment) to them. Those two westerns are Tombstone and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. While I only love two, 3:10 To Yuma (the original starring Glen Ford and Van Heflin) and I are strange bedfellows. This movie has woven its way through the last 20 years of my life.
Let’s jump on the way back train to the ripe age of 10 at some discount hut or what it be, my dad picks up this old ragged used VHS tape for 3:10 To Yuma. For whatever reason the name struck me as hilarious and I gave him a healthy dose of shit for it. My Mom finding it amusing that I found it amusing picked up on it. A few years later, my Dad is watching this show on the old Nashville Network. It was listing the 25 best westerns every made and guess what movie showed up in it. He gave me a smile and returned some of the hard time that I had given him.
Later in my final year of college, I was taking this movie appreciation class with an instructor who wasn’t very knowledgeable in movies or very appreciative. He was just a cat who liked to watch movies and pretend he knew more than you. He basically just used it as an excuse to bring in his favorite movies and use words like ‘crane shot’ and ‘rebirth’. One of those movies was Yuma. My class had a good laugh that I was familiar with the film. Half way through the movie the tape breaks. Guess who knows where there is a copy so we can finish?
Since then whenever my Dad or I is fishing through the bargain bin for a DVD, we affectionately call it ‘Digging for Yuma”, my Mom still calls it “Dumpster Diving”, but what does she know?
Still years later, lets say 5, I see a rumor float across my path that they are going to remake the movie and Tom Cruise is attached to it. Cruise in this movie would allow me to continue giving the ol man a rash since this can only be craptastic, but it goes away. About two years ago it resurfaces with the names Russell Crowe and Christian Bale and now we have a problem. These are respectable actors; somebody is taking this one serious.
William Evans awakes to noise coming from outside. His family’s barn is being torched in an effort to get the Evans’ off the land so the railroad can come through. William’s parents, Ben (Christian Bale) and Alice (Gretchen Mol) are as poor as the dirt they spit on. They managed to save the horses from the barn, but the feed was burnt up and the cattle were set free.
Dan is going to head into town to make things right and prove to his boy that he isn’t a washed up, never was push over of a man, but first they have to get their cattle back.
Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), the rootinest tootinest cowpoke in all the land, and his band of renegades are about to knock over a stagecoach being protected by Crowe’s arch nemesis and Pinkerton, McElroy (Peter Fonda). To stop the coach, Wade moves the Evans’ cattle into the middle of the road. All guarding the coach are killed except McElroy who Wade doesn’t want to go out like this.
While the gang heads south to Mexico, Wade stays behind in the close town of Brisby where he has his eye on the barmaid. Evans rolls up looking to get McElroy some medical help and try to straighten things out with the men who he owes money. Almost by chance Evans has a hand in Wade’s apprehension and comes across a means to make a little money by helping to get Wade on the 3:10 train to Yuma and so he can be tried and sent to the gallows. Along the way you can see a bound if not a friendship start to form between the two, though it doesn’t show up until the last quarter of the movie.
Can Evans get Wade on the train and collect him some bootie? Will Wade’s gang set him free and gun down every man, woman and child who gets in the way?
Make that three westerns I love. While 3:10 To Yuma, won’t have the same replay value as the previously mentioned westerns it is a very good film and definitely one I could sit through again.
This is a very basic hooker with a heart of gold story, just subtract breasts and blowjobs and add in biceps and some 5 O’clock shadows. The power of this movie lies with the performances of Bale and Crowe. When the history of movies is written Bale and Crowe will go down as two of the finest actors to ever grace the silver screen and that is saying a lot from me, because I hate Russell Crowe, but you cannot deny the man’s talent.
This was the ultimate guys and gals movie. The guys got a bunch of testosterone laden cowboys and even some Indians running around looking to shoot, blast, stab and beat up any living thing in sight and probably bed any women good enough to point their jubblies in their direction and bat their eyes.. The girls, well I am pretty sure I could hear the women cream their panties anytime Crowe or Bale walked onto screen in all their sun burnt and rugged glory. Many a jean and thong had to be separated on the way out of the theater if I didn’t miss my guess.
Bale’s straight and grounded performance allowed Russell Crowe to run all over this film with his character and it is more than welcome. Crowe’s off screen problems actually help this character, because while his on screen character is almost too polite and charming you just know behind those eyes lurks the killer that everybody fears. When I say charming, I mean charming in a way that half way through this movie your head is trying to write an ending that allows both to live. I mean a showdown like this somebody has to die, right? They can’t have the all for my family and trying to earn the respect of my son, Dan Evans die? Nor can they have the serial killing, bank robbing, broken home making, but ultimately nice guy drop at the end, could they? Would they dare have both go down in a blaze of glory?
Crowe wasn’t the only person chewing scenes in this either. Wade’s first in command and the one trying to spring him from his captors; Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) was given plenty of scenes. Prince resembles very closely the Ringo character from Tombstone.
The other performances were good and even, but between the three there really wasn’t any room for anybody else to shine, not that that is a bad thing.
While director James Mangold is accomplished, I really couldn’t keep from watching the chemistry between the two main actors enough to really pay attention to how he made the movie and maybe that is the best compliment I can give him. If I am paying attention to things other than the story, the director isn’t doing his/her job.
There were a few detractors to the movie. Firstly, Evans is put up as an old soldier in the sharp shooters division. I can’t say his aim was true enough for that to make sense. I also was not thrilled with the end that came to Prince (Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know he was going to bite, it, this character always buys it at the end); although I did appreciate not getting the ultimate western cliché, the 10 paces and draw showdown.
I also did not care for Kevin Durand’s performance as Tucker, one of the other men tasked with taking Wade to the train. It looked like he was going for the egotistical pompous ass role that you have to have as a means to get you to like the villain. He nailed the look like an ass part, but didn’t hit anything more than that.
3:10 To Yuma is absolutely worth checking out in the theater. Where it ranks all-time versus other westerns, is a question I should leave to somebody more in tune with the genre and has seen more westerns that I have, but as you can see I have placed it firmly in my top three.
