moviereview - 3.10 To Yuma

3.10 TO YUMA

	A strugglng rancher sees a chance to make some cash and improve his standing as a father. All he has to do is get the notorious murderer Ben Wade on the 3.10 train to Yuma.	score 3+	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Russell Crowe, Christian Bale,
Ben Foster, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda, Dallas Roberts

Director
James Mangold

Screenwriter
Halsted Welles
Michael Brandt

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
MA / 117 minutes

Australian Release
January 2008

Official Site

Revisiting the 1952 Glen Ford / Van Heflin classic, James Mangold (Walk The Line) reinvigorates the Western of yore. Unlike The Assassination of Jesse James, Andrew Dominik’s Brad Pitt starring extrapolation, Mangold sticks to basics and delivers a credible, often thrilling shoot-em-up that works on both sides of the genre divide.

Dan Evans (Bale) is a struggling farmer trying to show his hot-headed son the merits of virtue. He looks like a wimp. When they witness a vicious attack by Ben Wade’s gang it leads to the outlaw’s capture and an opportunity for Evans to make some quick cash and raise his son’s parental perception. Evans’ job is to put America’s Most Wanted on the 3.10 train to Yuma.

The shadow of Clint Eastwood hangs low over 3.10 To Yuma. His strength was his ambiguity and Wade’s villainy is nothing if not ambiguous. It is the film’s triumph that creates a scoundrel who is a cold-hearted professional killer one minute, the next he’s saving his captor’s life. “Do one good deed and I imagine it becomes habit forming,” he says, though Wade’s motives are always questionable. Evans hadn’t counted on his duplicity, a character inconsistency that gives Mangold, Bale and Crowe plenty of grist to work a superior battle of wills.

Dan and Ben are a perfect fit for the actors who convincingly lend their signature charisma. Each man, certain of his (im)moral superiority, seizes the chance to exorcise personal demons although neither had factored the menace posed by Wade’s henchmen led by the utterly psychotic Charlie Prince (an eye-catching, scene-stealing Ben Foster). They turn narrative tables and take the story into unexpected territory. This psychological tension is superbly underlined by Marco Beltrami’s evocative score, one with more than a hint of Morricone at the edges. While some nagging questions arise and Mangold’s pace stumbles occasionally, 3.10 To Yuma is a mature, exciting work from an always interesting, often excellent director.

// COLIN FRASER