3:10 TO YUMA Review
Duck you Sucker! Because 3:10 to Yuma is an old fashioned great time at the movies, brimming full with big movie star performances, colourful character actors and tension ratcheted set pieces. It is not out to re-invent the wheel, but rather to remind you that the wheel is still there and turning quite well, thank-you very much. Larger than life Sergio Leone-esque characters (who would have thought X3’s Ben ‘Angel’ Foster had this much hostile charisma going on), picturesque John Ford vistas - including a run in with the Apache, and Sam Peckinpah red-splatter all act as a survey of the evolution of the western over the years. Percolate the themes of defending ones family, claim and honor, the impending railroad, and generally 'what it takes to be a man' into the mix and 3:10 to Yuma is indeed posturing to be a Western 101 introductory course for the new millennium cowboy revival.
The story follows hard-pressed civil war veteran turned family man Dan Evans. His wife is upset that he is taking monetary risks with the local land-owners who want to sell the property to lay down railway track for the not-far-off railroad. His youngest son suffers heavily from TB and his older son thinks he is a coward. While rounding their cattle up, Evans and sons witness a stage robbery gone very violent. Infamous outlaw Ben Wade seems to enjoy taking the payroll stage, as this is his 22nd effort at doing so. He even leaves one of the Pinkerton guards (a barely recognizable Peter Fonda full of piss and vinegar) alive with a gut wound just because he enjoys stubbornness of Pinkerton pursuit. Upon spotting Evans and sons eavesdropping on their crime scene he just steals their horses to get to town. Evans makes it to town on foot and the local authorities round up Wade after his rest of gang has split the money and split town. The town being light on law enforcement, Evans sees a lucrative opportunity to get his holding out of dept and earn a favour with the railroad company, and joins the party escorting Wade to the nearest railway station for transport to justice (the noose). Of course the gang gets wind of the capture, as does Evans oldest son and other interested parties along the way, making the escort duty a trial by gun-fire, blood and dynamite.
The films ever-surprising casting is a part of its charm. Fully expecting members from the cast of Deadwood to have roles here or there (dialogue splattered with “the Pinkertons” and “road agents” recalls David Milch’s HBO opus, although the language is not as salty)it was a pleasant surprise to see Alan Tudyk show up as the easygoing and humourous Doc Potter (echoes of Firefly’s Wash).
While I’m pretty sure that James Mangold’s update of the 1957 Glenn Ford starring version has a fair bit more visceral action set-pieces and gory imagery, it is the psychology and personality of the two lead characters that make the film. Quiet scenes, anticipating violence, where the ideals of the two men conflict are what really generate the sparks. The competent action sequences feel perfunctory more than anything else (anytime the dynamite comes however...) 3:10 to Yuma is as much a re-location of Patrice Laconte’s fine character study The Man on the Train (two men in hard places, desperate in their own way, repulsed and fascinated with the character traits of the other) as it is a remake of the original western. Like Mangold's Walk the Line, this is a performance driven movie.
Russell Crowe is given the lion-share of ‘big movie star’ material, here playing the lovable yet vicious bible quoting scoundrel. It is a performance that in lesser hands could teeter into ridiculous show-boating or posturing (particularly the sketchy closing minutes), but Crowe proves why he is where he is and it is not by accident. Acting with his eyes, smile and simple presence, this is mannered and effortless acting. Christian Bale has to handle a larger emotional spectrum, as he carries the narrative and emotional weight of the film. The scenes with his wife (an underused, but fine Gretchen Mol) and oldest son are carried off with honesty and weight. Despite fine performances the film remains very much a Hollywood escape picture, in its own way a crowd pleaser that should leave more than one viewer hungry for more of Ben Wade (and less of A Good Year’s Max Skinner).
Consider the slow but increasingly steady trickle of westerns of the past few years with Open Range, The Proposition and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - this is a handsome trio of films itching to to start an earnest revival effort. 3:10 to Yuma offers a satisfying gateway to a revitalized genre which has more great things to come in the form of the Malick-ian The Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford, noirish No Country for Old Men and biblical There Will Be Blood. Its desire to entertain over any sort of aggressive re-invention might make it The Illusionist to any one of those three up-and-comers The Prestige. Either way, it should be a satisfying and dusty fall season at the multiplex.
3:10 to Yuma opens wide Friday September 7th.
Post Script: For those of you who want to import the the stranger stuff (yea, that is probably most of you) of course there is also Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django and Jee-woon Kim’s The Good, The Bad, and the Weird. Yum.
