By Su-Kim Lee
Its GLADIATOR vs AMERICAN PSYCHO!
Is it possible to refrain from saying “The Western is Back!” or “Western Revival” or “Rebirth of the Western” or, shudderingly enough, “the near-extinct genre has returned!” every single time a cowboy movie is released? They never went away. True, offerings are now few and far between, but that’s because they’re not as easy to crank out as a teen gross-out semi-porn. Between coordinating the logistics of a desert shoot (“a person needs to drink HOW much water every day?!”) and building plank-board towns during raging thunderstorms, you’ve got massive costuming concerns, which pistols are live / which ones are loaded with blanks and…have you every actually tried to ride a horse?!
Also, PLEASE stop claiming the genre’s been subverted by non-Americans. That’s never been the case. Some of the most memorable and enduring examples of excellent oaters were provided by Japan (“YOJIMBO”), Australia (“THE PROPOSITION”) and Italy (Spaghetti, anyone?).
The plot to 3:10 TO YUMA (like every great western) is simple. Downtrodden and disrespected rancher (Bale) agrees to join a posse to help escort bad bad bad guy (Crowe) to the 3:10 to Yuma for $200 desperately needed bucks. Not so much a plot as an impetus, yeah? But it’s the grit between the lines they can’t floss out that makes this film – maybe not a classic - but definitely an eminently watchable shoot ‘em up.
The original 3:10 was more of a dramatic, bedroom stage play than a movie, and director James Mangold (WALK THE LINE, COP LAND) realizes this and expands the story, characters and amps up the action.
When last we saw Crowe in an oater, it was on the opposite side of the coin in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD as a gunslinger cum priest and he quietly chewed up the screen in that throwaway movie. In 3:10, Crowe is so charmingly evil that we don’t want to see him redeemed. Redemption for his character would be just as disheartening to learn that Johnny Ringo (TOMBSTONE) went straight, married, had 10 kids and became a Mormon.
Christian Bale once again proves he can effortlessly and convincingly portray a loser with the same brio as his turns as a hero or a villain. In 3:10, Bale’s character is not just a failure, but a monumentally spectacular failure. He lost part of a leg in the Civil War, his cattle herd is dwindling, the railroad goons have set fire to his barn, his sons hate him and his wife won’t put out (how do we know? They only have two kids!).
The two most refreshing surprises in the film are Peter Fonda as an aging, gut-shot Pinkerton agent and Ben Foster (“Angel” in the last X-MEN movie) channeling untapped and heretofore unknown evil. Oh, and along the way to Yuma there’s mind-play, gun-play, angry Native Americans, Coolies laying rail, and the most creative use of a dynamite detonator ever (imagine trying to jump-start a person with jumper cables).
In a lame attempt at not sounding sanctimonious, I think that most reviewers either A) didn’t understand the movie or B) didn’t watch the whole thing. It’s easy to be dismissive and cite the clichés, but that’s the whole impetus. 3:10 TO YUMA is an homage to the genre as well as a pretty cool movie. However, there is a moment where even I was wondering why Crowe’s character didn’t simply walk away, but at the end I realized that he had come to grudgingly respect Bale’s character and he knew that his pending incarceration was temporary at best. The film delivers serious old school Western morés, bullets a flyin’, horses a gallopin’, women a swoonin’ and male bonding at it’s most primal. 3:10 TO YUMA is the anti UNFORGIVEN.
The passion of everyone involved can best be summed up in a quip by Christian Bale from an Entertainment Weekly article: “Nobody wants to see another YOUNG GUNS.”