3:10 to Yuma Movie Review
 
Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster; Directed by James Mangold
Dan is down. Somebody just set his barn on fire. The family is discontented and bitter. Money is almost as scarce as water. They can barely scrape together enough coins to pay for the youngest son's asthma medication. The railroad wants to take their land. Life generally stinks. When good fortune finally smiles down on the wounded veteran and his family, it is in the form of Ben Wade, the region's most infamous outlaw. When two chance meetings cause Dan to gain the upper hand over Ben, a deal is struck. If Dan can get Ben to the town of Contention and onto the prison train to Yuma, a large lump sum of cash will follow, and virtually all of his problems will be over. Dan accepts, and so begins a ride down a route fraught with trouble.
All hail the western. Ah that tricky, underappreciated genre. Tricky because the plots are often too simple or clichéd that the whole things comes off as being a big bore. Underappreciated, because no one seems to care about them except for Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner, who were the only ones to make anything notable out of it in the last two decades. Westerns don't generally appeal to women because of the lack of strong female characters, - or any female characters at all for that matter, in some cases. And they don't appeal to the men of this generation, as the often slow pace frustrates the short attention spans. Both are valid points. Yet not. The western sets such conflict against itself that its strong points are often canceled out. These films are extremely heavy on character. Some of the richest portraits of human nature can be found in westerns, often at its clearest and most appalling state. The western takes us back to a time when things were quite primal. When men and women had to struggle every day of their lives to keep rising to meet the sun. The terrain wasn't kind, the weather wasn't gentle, and the only form of fleeting comfort was to be found under the roofs of saloons. Such isolation and hardship often bred madness and violence. It's not a pleasant place to visit.
Luckily, director James Mangold doesn't try to water any of this down by romanticizing any of the unpleasantries. Because one of the most basic conflicts in humans is the wrestling we do with our morals and consciences, we learn to have greater respect for those who choose what is right over what is easy. I'm trying to justify this film from the core of it, because any description of its fantastic cinematography, musical score, and other such fare is probably something you won't care two hoots for if you've already got your mind set against watching westerns. If you're on the fence though, it should be enough for you to know, in the most basic terms, that it's got Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in it, and that, hey, it's just plain GOOD.
Grading:
Story = A-
Originality = A
DVD Features = N/A
Acting = A
Enjoyability = A-
Visuals = A
Overall = A
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