3:10 to Yuma 2007
This is a big character-driven action Western with two big stars in Christian Bale and Russell Crowe (a brit and an Australian playing Americans, grrrr . . . ), but with other big stars and some up and comers in addition to Walk the Line’s director, James Mangold. Christian Bale plays the meek downtrodden rancher taking the biggest chance of his life in order to save his family and their struggling ranch. Russell Crowe plays a legendary outlaw being escorted to a railroad stop to catch the 3:10 train to the prison in Yuma while his gang is in hot pursuit trying to stop that from happening. There are any number of great characters here, from Dallas Roberts (who had a great small part as record producer Sam Philips in Walk the Line) as the businessman who wants to put away the outlaw who is menacing his stage coaches to Ben Foster’s Charlie Prince, the homicidal, but incredibly loyal former confederate soldier trying to rescue his gangleader.
It is a great setup with some great characters. And there are a lot of shootouts and close calls along the way (with a huge body count), making it a great action movie too. The biggest flaw is that as the odds get increasingly small that Bale can get to the train alive, and the forces aligned against him grow increasingly larger, the only way out for the filmmakers is to do a bunch of ridiculous stuff that goes against everything set up earlier in the movie. The terrible ending, while saving the movie from being a cliché, also brings it down from an A to a B+. This is still a very good movie, but the ending will let you down (similar to No Country for Old Men the same year).
The Blu-ray DVD extras were very good, including a couple of good segments on making the movie as well as a documentary about real-life outlaw gangs from the period in the movie.
Written: 20 Dec 2008
Owned on: Digital