3:10 to Yuma

No spoiler alert necessary since I’m not revealing anything you won’t learn from the trailer.

Westerns are always fun. And they’re proof that you can make good action movies without cool cars. If you like the genre, you should enjoy 3:10 TO YUMA provided you can get past the one rather large conceit that everyone moves heaven and earth to bring this outlaw to justice and don’t seem to mind that about a hundred other people get killed senselessly along the way. It would be wrong to just shoot the son of a bitch, but killing other folks in service of this story is fine and dandy. But like I said, get past that and you’re golden.

And it’s the same question you ask in any James Bond movie. Instead of putting him in some elaborate water tank with sharks and piranha and pollution from the East River, why doesn’t Ernst Blowfeld or Dr. No just take out a gun and blow his brains out? And after the third time he escapes from the death ray device, the contracting chamber with walls of spikes, and the giant custom-built Cuisinart you’d think the Super Villains (who we’re told are the most brilliant minds in the world) would get the idea that perhaps a pistol and one bullet might just do the trick. But I digress…

Russell Crowe was the whole movie. You rarely see a vicious outlaw who is insouciant. Christian Bale was the young James Brolin, very serviceable in the thankless good guy role. Everyone else played stereotypes. The marshal and his deputies said, “shucks,” “if he’s out there we’re gonna git him”, and “don’t know where you come from mister but in this town we uphold the law”. And the gang members were all Bruce Dern (pictured right). Ben Foster, (Crowe’s second-in-command) wanted to add depth to his character so along with Dern he added a touch of Dennis Hopper.

For my money the Bruce Dern deranged cowboy is the easiest character any actor can play. You just scrunch up your face, look crazed, adopt a bad Western accent and say in your most craven breathless voice: “Can I touch her titties now, pa? Can I? Can I? Can I?”

The sets and scenery seemed realistic, although how would anyone who’s alive today know? (Wait. Keith Richards might know.) They only said “Fuck” five or six times, not 54,892,843 like a typical hour of DEADWOOD so I worry that the dialog wasn’t authentic.

But the conditions seemed realistic enough that I thought, if I lived back during those times I don’t think I’d care to make my home in the Old West. There seemed to be, at least for me, a discernible. lack of creature comforts. I understand that if you live in Arizona in 1870 it’s going to be hot and there’s no air conditioning but God forbid one of these cowboys wore shorts? Or built an overhang so that in one three-foot patch in the entire state there was shade?

So all the while I’m watching this movie I’m thinking, “these settlers couldn’t travel three more days and end up in LA?” There were beaches back then, nice weather, and the neighborhoods were much safer. If anyone acted up they had Zorro. But I digress again…

Bottom line, if you like horse operas you’ll like this movie. And the other good news is that 3:10 TO YUMA isn’t its running time.