3:10 TO YUMA (2007)

I attended this movie with, if not at the behest of (presuming I knew what behest meant) my long-time movie going tag-team partner, Brett Duck. Brett is a stentorian cineaste (cf. “behest”) whose sly but amazed obsessive befuddlement at the more overtly lunatic elements of the careers of Brian De Palma and Ken Russell has given me a lot of honest belly-laughs over the years.

Our mutual movie-attending exploits have yielded generally sterling but somewhat chequered results. From the heights of Dick Tracy (still underrated comic-book revisionism – be the first on your block to rediscover this screw-loose, imaginative bottler) to the lows of Congo (pongo) and the desperation-inclined Australian Tarantino-wannabe Two Hands (for beginners). It was during the latter epic, about one hour into proceedings, as the eyelids slowly lost their battle against the combined forces of the movie-makers and gravity, that Brett uttered perhaps the most telling eight-word film review in motion picture history – “Do you want to go grab a drink?”

As previously indicated, 3:10 to Yuma was Brett’s choice, and I have to admit that even as the trailers slowly oozed by, my hand was already convulsing in a claw-like gesture, in full anticipation of grabbing an early beer.

I should never have doubted a mind sturdy enough to survive the ravages of more than a dozen Ken Russell movies more or less intact.

If you like Westerns, 3:10 to Yuma is an absolute pleasure. Bear in mind that the first four words of the previous sentence are arguably as vital to the full meaning of the whole as any four words ever to hit imaginary electronic paper. I mean, you could conceivably see Brokeback Mountain, not like Westerns very much at all, and still enjoy it. That might not say anything definitive about your sexuality, although it would almost certainly do so for your taste in movies. Not to mention an attention-span considerably more brawny, if not ironclad, than mine. Anyway, if you’re not into Westerns at all, you may as well skip 3:10 entirely, and go straight to the bar.

For those in love with classic cinema prairie-dust, and particularly the mutation of it from the 1950s, when the classic western form was maintained, but they injected a psychological strain to the genetic mix, there will be no barriers to your enjoyment of this movie, trust me. I was amazed, and you can be too.

There’s a farmsteader type guy (Christian Bale) with wife, kid, poverty and the whole 8½ yards, and to sum him up in a brief epigram, He Needs Money. Also in town is a captured leader of a particularly desperado gang (Russell Crowe), and they need someone to escort him to the timetable-meat of the title, a train which will whisk him away to the iron stockade, or whatever they called jails back then. Can you guess who joins the escort party, and the answer isn’t Don Knotts. The only problem is that Crowe’s gang is still free, not to mention soiled in perhaps all but one possible moral and physical senses of the term, and everyone knows they’ll be intervening at multiple gunpoint attempting to interrupt delivery of said boss to said public transportation.

Adding to the general porridge of interest is that the level-speaking, intelligent Crowe character is adept at psychological manipulation of his captors, the townspeople and authority figures aren’t exactly filling you to the brim with confidence about their mental fortitude, and you’re still trying to work out whether Bale is really doing this for the money (which he’d have every excuse to do – at least a new pair of pants must be at the back of his mind), or out of some irrepressible urge towards moral rectitude at any cost.

The tensions thus set up are pretty fully explored – it’s a current movie, so there’s plenty of time, of course – and it’s a satisfying movie on that score, mostly.

Those up for a little action on their western-themed pizza probably won’t have much to complain about either, although in terms of where and how everything happens when it explodes into gunplay, I have to say director James Mangold left me plenty marooned, pardner. I can understand what he was going for, in terms of a subjective character’s-eye view of how confusing and disorienting a gunfight would be in such cramped streets and buildings, but the climactic tension was logically in establishing the difficulty of Bale/Crowe traversing the small township to the station, and for a lot of that journey - much like many a classic long family car trip - we just don’t know exactly where we are, much less how far, or where, we have to go. The staging of many action scenes could have been blocked out a lot more clearly, rather than blocking the paying patrons out.

The other deficiencies are relatively minor. There’s an occasional tendency towards Roger Moore/James Bondisms in dialogue – that curse of the modern-day megaplex movie. It’s just not a “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”-friendly environment, and stupid answers to sappy questions don’t seem that much of a bargain either. There’s the introduction of a third party of ne’er-do-wells in a sub-plot-via-freeway extension that seems wholly calculated to add nothing but length to the enterprise. Some characters are purely, if not ruthlessly, “types” but that isn’t much of a problem, because they’re not the characters we’re interested in anyway, and the latter are thoroughly explored. There are shades of grey in the character-development of the major players, and they may be black-and-whitish shades of grey, but they certainly hold the interest.

WHAT FOLLOWS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IS A MINOR “SPOILER”

One character undergoes a fundamental moral makeover in the final reel which is difficult to credit in the face of absolutely every piece of information we’ve been given about him earlier. It makes sense in terms of overall dramatic structure, but we’re not given the information to make it credible, on either an emotional or analytical level. To put it less in less high-falutin’ terminology, it’s a lovely looking pill, Doc, but I think it was made for a horse, not for humans. The movie has enough goodwill going for it by this point that you’re willing to choke it down, but essentially, your heart says “Go” but your head says “No”.

END “SPOILER” INTERLUDE

I continue to find Russell Crowe as good in movies as I find him mind-fraying in his occasional interactions with real life. Christian Bale provides everything the part of the rancher needs. Peter Fonda is perfect in a relatively minor role. You’ll remember Ben Foster as the blackest of the blackhearts, although I did find him somewhat Kraftwerk-fan looking for a western setting initially.

3:10 to Yuma is what it is, which is an old-school western, which picked up a touch of the Sergio Leone’s (particularly in the sound-alike score) on its travels down the Way-Back Machine drive-thru lane to the present. If that sounds like fun, you won’t find the fun-potential misrepresented here, on the ol’ prairie Fun-O-Meter. If it doesn’t, then you know where to head, and the drinks are on you.

(9 out of 11 on the internationally-celebrated MPHOAH scale)

(There are no comparisons with the original 1957 version of 3:10 to Yuma here for the not-particularly-startling reason that I’ve never seen it.)

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