Everything in cinema runs in cycles: romantic comedies, dramas, war movies, science fiction and Westerns. For some genres--action films and comedies especially--it seems they're never out of season. Come the summer and fall, you'll be certain to get a whole bushel of them thrown at you. Some genres, like the Western, take longer to make their comebacks. When they do, it usually turns out the arrival wasn't worth the wait. The last really great Western was Clint Eastwood's 1992 morality tale Unforgiven, for which he won Oscars for best director and best picture.
It'll probably be a while before the cycle for the Western comes around again. But if it does happen to start up anytime soon, you can be certain that 3:10 to Yuma will be leading the pack.
The movie, a remake of the 1957 classic bearing the same name, is unusual in the fact that it stars two foreign actors--an Englishman and an Australian--as the leads in this distinctly American vehicle. However, given the renowned skills of the two men, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe respectively, it comes as no surprise that they pull off their roles both effortlessly and convincingly.
3:10 is a modern take on a bygone era; the Western as simple adventure story, with plenty of gunfights, evildoers and good men who feel a moral outrage at the injustices they witness and are compelled by their own sense of right and wrong to act. Dan Evans(Bale) is a rancher who's had a long string of bad luck. There's been a drought on his farm which has led to starv-ing cattle, lack of food and a weighty sense of failure resting on his shoulders. His wife Alice(Gretchen Mol) and the eldest of his two sons(Logan Lerman and Benjamin Petry) no longer respects him as a provider or father. He owes money to the land develop-er from whom he rents, and who chooses to send Dan a very nasty message as to what will happen if his debt is not fulfilled.
Fortune doesn't exactly smile down upon Dan, but it sort-of winks at him when the notorious murdering outlaw Ben Wade(Crowe) is captured by the town's sheriff and his men. The owner of the stagecoach company most recently raided by Wade and his gang hires a group of men to trek eighty miles or so to the town of Contention, in order to place Wade onto the 3:10 train to Yuma prison. Seeing the opportunity to dig himself out of his financial and emotional hole, Dan signs on for the promise of $200(a lot of money back then) and sets off to help deliver the bad guy.
3:10 to Yuma is more than just a simple Western. It's a type of divining rod for how someone chooses the path of right or wrong, and the hardship on both sides of the metaphorical fence. While not as authentic in its detailing of this old Wild West as East-wood's opus(this movie feels more like someone consciously shooting a Western film, whereas Unforgiven looked as if some-one had thrown a camera back in time and happened to capture a story in the old west as it was unfolding), the film is populated by realistic, believable characters. Director James Mangold(Walk The Line, Cop Land) was very wise to cast two solid, dependable actors like Bale and Crowe as the leads. In spite of hailing from foreign shores, the duo acquit themselves well, lending gravity to their positions. They play off each other well, and while there is an odd bond which forms between the two(a divergence from the '57 original), neither character ever truly loses sight of who they are.
There are some other changes made from the original story-line of course. In this modern version, Dan Evans has been given two sons, presumably so that audiences can relate to him better. Not to mention teen girls will swoon over Logan Lerman as elder son Will, who sneaks out to accompany his father on the journey
...not really to help dad out as much as to observe the captive Wade, who like so many criminals inexplicably admired by modern youth, is romanticized to heroic proportions in Will's mind. I found Will's defiance of his father, actually, to be one of the only things which really didn't fit in this movie. While it's understandable that given the financial circumstances, Will would start to lose faith in his father's abilities, his open disrespect was out of place for the era--sometime just after the end of the Civil War--in which the story is set. Remember that back then, corpor-al punishment was allowed for kids, with no one to report you to the local cops. It would have been appropriate for Dan to take Will "out behind the shed" as the saying goes. Then again, it wouldn't be an opportunity for director Mangold to show what an upstanding man Dan is, to never lay hands on his boy.
The cast is peppered with fine performers throughout: Peter Fonda, fresh from his laughable turn as the devil in Ghost Rider, gets back on the mark as a Pinkerton previously injured by Wade, and now seeking satisfaction by delivering him to the hangman's noose. Ben Foster, who played the Angel in X-Men 3, is awe-inspiring in his brutality and sadism as the lead henchman of Wade's gang. The real stars of course are Crowe and Bale, who compliment each other's performances perfectly, delivering a believable balance between the light and dark which exists in every man's soul. Crowe's Wade is a poet of a killer; a man intimately familiar with the bible and quotes verses from it while carefully penciling beautiful sketches of the nature around him in a book he carries, yet can turn on one of his own men in a second. Bale's Dan is a moral man who is tempted to do amoral things along the path to Yuma, yet somehow finds the resolve to do the right thing...no matter the cost to him, if only so that his wife and children will come to respect and love him once more.
I won't give away the ending, save to say that it is quite differ-ent from the original. A bit preposterous in some ways, regarding the decision of one of the main characters. The musical score by Marco Beltrami(Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Blade II, the original Resident Evil) apes the sound of classic Western movie scores very well, much as Mangold's film imitates the style itself. These are forgivable aspects, though; the film itself delivers a solid story and characters one can care about, on both sides of the good/evil equation. 3:10 to Yuma probably won't bring the cycle of the Western back to full turn, and while it isn't a truly authentic slice of Americana...it definitely is the next best thing.
Official Archives of LanceReviews....
Hard train a'comin...!
3:10 To Yuma pulls a couple nails out of the Westerns' coffin
3:10 To Yuma: A film that gives hope to anyone wanting to make a Western.
3:10 gives a family to Dan Evans(Bale); a radical departure from the original.
Russell Crowe gives a solid performance as a Western out-law. Peter Fonda plays a Pinkerton wounded by Crowe and left for dead.
Stuck in a loveless marriage, with a family no longer respecting him, Dan Evans takes on a suicide mission to redeem himself in their eyes.
Hell on the range: Evans and his new allies race to protect his farm when it's feared Wade's gang has come a'callin'.
