By Faith McQuinn

I knew there was very little chance of 3:10 TO YUMA not being a good movie. With a solid cast and a great director, there’s very little room for error, and I was not at all disappointed. Never before have I been so anxious about people making it to a train on time.

Christian Bale is Dan Evans, a Civil War veteran who’s struggling to keep his farm and his family afloat. When big-time criminal Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) crosses his path, Evans jumps at the chance to make some money and take Wade to the train that will take him to Yuma prison. What ensues on the trip is nothing short of a seat-grabbing, tension filled adventure with lots of guns, horses, and a few well-placed explosions.

Christian Bale and Russell Crowe just might play American cowboys better than the Americans who've done it in the past. Crowe's slick bad man Ben Wade is likable even though he shoots his own man in the throat. Bale's Dan Evans is so honorable that, even though what he's doing is basically suicide, you root for him every step of the way.

The standout star, however, is neither of these men. It's Ben Foster. You know, the guy who played Angel in X-MEN 3? Yeah, he's miles away from being angelic in this movie. Foster plays Charlie Prince, Ben Wade’s right hand man. Charlie’s gunplay is deadly and his sneers just might be worse. His eerie comfort at being so ruthless makes him possibly more evil than his boss.


In the DVD commentary, director James Mangold describes them both as men who are neither bad nor good but simply fully realized characters that are simply surviving. This idea is probably was makes 3:10 TO YUMA a better western than we’ve seen in the past few years.

Most of the time, a modern western is simply trying to evoke the westerns of the 1950s. There’s no true story or real people involved, it’s just a movie with dirty men on horses carrying big guns and wearing even bigger hats. The story of Ben Wade and Dan Evans could play in almost any genre and still work. Yeah, there are still some sweeping landscape shots and there are still plenty of dirty men on horses with big guns, but YUMA just feels a little different than the average western.

With such a good movie, I’ll forgive the DVD for being kind of lacking. The three featurettes are rather dry. One is about the old west and looks like a bad Ken Burns ripoff. The other two are behind-the-scenes pieces that talk about making an epic and generic info on the movie. Neither one offers anything interesting.


James Mangold’s feature commentary, on the other hand, is extremely thorough.   He talks about everything from shooting outdoors to casting the film to adapting the screenplay. I felt as if I was sitting in one of my old film theory lectures, except I was interested in what this professor had to say.

I am not a big western fan. Never have been and never will be, but I’ve got to say, I have a completely different outlook on 3:10 TO YUMA. It’s truly an exciting action movie that just happens to be a western. It will satisfy the person looking for a popcorn action flick as well as the person who wants a film that’s a bit more on the intelligent side.