3:10 TO YUMA

Director: James Mangold (Walk the Line, Identity, Girl Interupted)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale

I love westerns. Or maybe a better way to put it is that I love the idea of westerns. Yeah, I love gunfights with 6-shooters, and galloping horses through a narrow red-rock drywash, but even more I love the wide vistas and searing sunsets. I really love the rugged mountains and endless tall-grass prairies, the rickety wooden villages with snowcapped peaks in the distance. So what I'm trying to say is that I love the expansiveness of the western. The open lands of the west, just waiting to be explored. 3:10 to Yuma is a western through and through, but it didn't feel very expansive to me. In fact, it was probably the most internalized western I've ever seen (including Unforgiven). So much so, that I'm not sure that the western genre was the right place for this film. Heck, the main plot point here involves some people trying to catch a train.

Christian Bale is a rancher in Arizona. He owes money and days from losing his ranch. Russell Crowe is a bandit, a famous one, the leader of a ruthless gang. They cross paths by chance, while Crowe is commiting a stage coach robbery. Soon after Crowe is captured back in town, and Bale is offered $200 to help escort him to the nearest train station, a day's ride away.

Bale desperately needs the money, but as the story plays out, we learn point by point that even more than cash Bale desperately needs some success in his life. He wants his kids to see a hero, rather than a loser when they look at him. More than money he realizes that he wants some respect.

As the ad hoc group of guards escort Crowe across the Arizona desert, they are slowly picked off one by one. At times it feels like a cheesy horror movie as one character after another is killed off. And just like a horror movie, in the end the only ones left are Crowe and Bales. The difference here is that Crowe is a bandit with a heart of gold. I found Crowe entirely unthreatening throughout the film, although I'm quite sure that that's not what they were trying for. Crowe was supposed to be some wicked villian with a spark of humanity left in him, and that spark was pulled out by his respect for Christian Bale's character until the bandit learned to be good again. Unfortunately, I found Crowe to be a pretty nice guy throughout. I really didn't believe this guy who liked to draw pictures of animals in his spare time, and who gave horses back to the people he stole them from was a legitimate old west bandit. So that's one major strike for the film.

Luckily, the movie was good enough on most other levels to get past that 0-1 count. I said previously that the film wasn't very expansive. No, not at all. In fact it felt very confined to me. In many westerns it takes weeks to get anywhere. Here it's a one-day journey. Excluding a couple of big action sequences, most of the events happen around campfires, and in cabins, and hotel rooms. It's a very talky picture, considering it's filled with rugged, old western characters. The two main characters talk to each other and around each. From the bandit, Bale learns to take action. From the rancher, Crowe learns to care about others. Of course there's also the obligatory shoot out at the end.

In a lot of ways I found the movie unbelievable, even kind of silly at times. (Sorry Luke Wilson, but you should not have been in this film, no matter how small your role was.) These characters were not real people at any time, especially back in the old west days. What the film was, however, was pretty interesting. Crowe and Bale are good actors. There was a fair amount of excitement going on. The characters, while not believable, were fairly interesting. And that's the key here I think. Maybe there wasn't a ton of truth going on, but there was a lot that was interesting. It's an engaging film and that's the single most imporant thing a film can have going for it. It's a "thinky" western, a "talky" western. It's not a very authentic feeling western. I didn't really believe in these characters. I didn't really believe in the ending. Somehow, despite all of that, it also managed to be a pretty darn good western.

Standouts: Bale and Crowe, decent (if someone fantastical) screenplay. Solid direction.
Blowouts: Very fake feeling characters. These guys only ever existed within the author's head.

Grade: B