3:10 to Yuma Review

As a film genre, the western has a history nearly as long as the cinema itself. The Great Train Robbery I (1903) is generally acknowledged as the first narrative feature film, and the western dominated the American pop culture landscape for much of the 20th century. The western became synonymous with the United States in the eyes of the world. Fifty years ago, when the original 3:10 to Yuma was released, if you were to ask a random foreigner what they knew about the USA, the response would likely have something to do with "cowboys" and "Bang! Bang!".

Which is not to say that it should bother anyone that the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma stars Welshman Christian Bale (The Prestige) and New Zealand’s Russell Crowe (Cinderella Man) in the leads. Filmakers around the world have successfully imported the western – most significantly the Italians, but there have been westerns made in just about every country that makes movies. Chinese Chow Yun-fat and Yugoslavian Gojko Mitic have played western heroes, and there has even been a Czech western musical (The Lemonade Kid). So casting an accomplished actor like Bale as an Arizona rancher isn’t such a stretch.

Based on Elmore Leonard’s short story, 3:10 to Yuma presents as iconic a western moral crisis as High Noon, to which it bears some resemblance. Crowe plays Ben Wade, a legendary outlaw who has been terrorizing the country with his exploits, leading a gang of cutthroats in robbing stagecoaches, trains and banks all over the Southwest. Wade meets rancher Dan Evans (Bale) while robbing an armored stage guarded by mercenary Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda).

Evans, a one-legged Civil War veteran, is already in a tight place, fighting a losing battle with his landlord to keep his ranch and seeing the respect of his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and eldest son William (Logan Leman) slipping away. Soon after the robbery, Evans comes upon Wade again in town, and delays the outlaw long enough for the wounded McElroy to capture him.
Desperately seizing an opportunity to earn some cash from the railroad – along with a chance to do something heroic for a change, reclaiming his self-respect – Evans joins a party charged with escorting the prisoner to Contention to meet the title train stop. Wade’s gang, led by his loyal lieutenant Charlie Prince (Ben Foster, offering a top notch psychopath), is determined to free their boss, killing anyone who gets in their way.

The band’s journey faces further challenges when renegade Native American warriors and some sinister railroad construction bosses exploiting hordes of Chinese workers attack. But Evans’ most dangerous adversary remains Wade himself, who wages a steady campaign of psychological warfare against the honest rancher. Evans finds that not only his own soul, but that of his son (who has tagged along), is jeopardized, as his prisoner tries to exert his devilish influence. As for Wade, he seems intent on proving to everyone – including himself – that he’s as bad a man as he’s reputed to be.

Director James Mangold (Walk the Line) paints his picture in all the shades expected in a western, with dusty frontier towns and arid landscapes, and fills his cast with familiar faces in weathered makeup, including Luke Wilson as a sadistic thug. The production wrings all the necessary excitement and suspense from the material, but keeps the moral drama in the center spotlight throughout.

The power of the western may have waned in the past fifty years, but every year or two filmmakers make an effort at reviving it. 3:10 to Yuma is not the sort of overwhelming masterpiece necessary to generate enough energy to jump start a genre, as, for example, Star Wars did for the science fiction adventure movie. But it’s a good story well told, which is what most people are looking for when they buy a ticket.

Special mention should be made of the sound design of the film, which creates the setting as much as the photography with the creak of saddle leather, the click of a six-gun hammer, the whine of a bullet off a barn door, and especially the ominous throbbing of the locomotive engine, which becomes its own motif on the soundtrack as much as anything composer Marco Beltrami and his orchestra play.