Rojo3:10 to Yuma
A common occurrence in the film trade (most prevalent within animation circles) is for one movie house to release a film of a certain genre and another house catching wind of these ‘nefarious’ goings on.
“How dare they release this film, damn what can we do?
“I know lets make something just like it with stars of equal billing”
I think the phrase is ‘Jonny-come-late-ly.
This I feel is the case with ‘3:10 to Yuma’. This is said with only the benefit of assumption it could be the other way around, I haven’t seen The Assassination of Jessie James’, but I think it would be better (maybe if you have seen both you can tell me if I’m right, at this point in time “my gut says MAYBE!”).
‘3:10’ looks so good on the surface. Bale and Crowe starring, Mangold directing, story ostensibly solid, but as it proceeded to play out, I found myself making excuses for how lack-lustre it actually was. I mean the film seemed to go nowhere, I could see the relationship between Crowe a hardened stagecoach robber and his guard Bale a hard-working honest to a fault rancher. Ben Wade (Crowe) respects Evans (Bale) as he knows that this is a man simply out for his family knowing he is putting his life into the hands of peril and strife to shuffle and deal out his immediate future.
Wade respects Evans, and I respect that he respects him “why him? You could have killed any of us, you could have killed me, why him”. But this respect that Crowe has, must have, a limit, not build to a zenith. In a scene we are almost tempted into thinking that Crowe was playing him from the beginning with an obligatory warning that he was indeed a bad man. As the film limps on, we see that his respect reaches almost homo-erotic proportion, made all the easier to swallow with Charlie Pride’s (Ben Foster, who is very good) all consuming loyalty to Evans. Pride, willing to drive his horse to death in order to catch up with Evan’s seems to be forging on in a romantic comedy race against time. In fact this aspect of the film follows all the rules of the romantic comedy “I got to tell him I love him before he gets on the train”!
Now I don’t want to ruin the ending and I’m not saying that this film is gash, it checks all the right boxes, but that’s all it does. But the ending I didn’t buy it and they shouldn’t have tried to sell it. Though by now you should really like Crowe (the endearing bad guy is a lovely touch to most films) his behaviour is unbecoming. A feared highway man, ready to kill a member of his gang for a folly that brings the gang near peril but not that close really, another point of contention I have.
Evens, willing to send his gang head on at an angry gatling gun is un-accepting of a young rogue not checking to see if the stage coach charges had expired or not, it is inconsistent as is his reasoning for killing the boy, citing that he was sloppy and had put them all in danger. If you look at this whole scene we actually see that he is sloppy and has put them all carelessly into danger, just watch how simply he ends the chase, a experienced highway-man would have surveyed the lay of the land he was to assault from before he waged his battle.
All in all I was disappointed in 3:10 to Yuma, and I think that disappointment springs from the fact that I may have expected to much, but why shouldn’t I. Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, good Director I should be able to expect to view a good movie, but instead I got something that was passable at best, a C if you will.
6.5/10
