3:10 TO YUMA

3:10 to Yuma Directed by James Mangold, starring Russell Crow, Christian Bale, and Gretchen Mol, based on a short story by Elmore Leonard.

The well-acted 3:10 to Yuma is a remake of a 1957 Western, set in 1800s Colorado, which had starred dimple-cheeked Glen Ford in the Russell Crowe gunslinger-robber role. Van Heflin played Dan Evans, the upstanding rancher that Christian Bale takes on in Mangold’s film. The earlier film was shot black and white, of course; its successor was filmed by cinematographer Phedon Papamichaels. in the beautiful sweeping colors of the red-gold/blue-sky West

Russell Crowe’s Ben Wade is a ruthless stage-coach robber who kills with narrow, steely-eyed detachment, his eyes as blue as them thar Western skies. But he don’t act alone, hooey naw! He has this here gang as loyal to him as Al Qaeda members are to bin Laden. Fact, like bin Laden, he mostly has his henchmen do his dirty work. He is a complex dude: he waxes poetic, quotes the Bible, and renders delicate pencil sketches of birds in a thick sketch book he carrries with him. The film opens with an ambush by Wade’s gang of a stagecoach carrying gold and is guarded by Pinkerton cops. Though shooting with a Gatling gun, the Pinks are no match for their attackers. A Pinkerton detective played by Peter Fonda is badly wounded and taken hostage. He makes a brave stand, but ends up ruthlessly flung off a cliff. When Wade is finally captured almost by chance by a town posse and Marshall Weathers (Luce Rains),they sequester him in rancher Evans’s one-room, one-storey ranch house. Wade’s gang scatters and goes into hiding then hatches plans to rescue him. Meanwhile, as wWade, Evans and a couple of the posse sit down to a meal with the Evanses, Wade comes close to seducing Evans’s wife (Gretchen Mol) with some romantic blarney about green eyes we’d witnessed him spouting earlier to a dance-hall girl. Evans’s teenage son (Logan Lerman), who’s been reading pulp fiction about bad guys, however, is seduced. He compares his dad with Wade and sees his dad as a weak coward. Still, Evans, needing 200 dollars to save his ranch from being bought out by railroad developers, hires on to the posse.

Seems they have to hole up at Evans’s to wait for a stagecoach to take them to the nearest railway station where they can put Wade on the jail-train to Yuma, the 3:10, hence the movie’s title. While waiting, Wade’s gang attacks the house, killing most of the posse, but not succeeding in rescuing their boss. The rest of the posse bail, citing family. The Marshall tells Evans he can bow out, too. But Evans sees the look in his oldest kid’s eyes, feels the necessity to save the ranch for his wife and kids, stays on. So, he and the Marshall climb aboard the coach, with a shackled Wade, and head towards town. The tension begins on the journey where they have to pass through Indian territory while being followed closely, but not that close, by Wade’s gang, led by Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) who has the visage and comportment of a pure evil. Once they reach the hotel where they must wait for the train, the suspense heightens. The town law chases everyone off the streets and warns townsfolk to not leave home. Evans must stay alert guarding Wade in a fancy room. Their dialgue is stilted, as befits the Western man, still, they philosophize and when Wade tries to buy off Evans with hundreds more dollars than he’ll get for putting Wade on the train, Wade can’t help but be impressed with Evans’s morality and family loyalty. You can see a flicker of envy and even admiration in Crowe’s eyes. The film evolves into more of a psychological battle than a gang shootout. Wade’s honchos catch up and ride menacingly into town. Meanwhile, Evans’s son had sneaked out of the house and secretly follows his dad and his captive. There’s an earlier scene by a campfire where he has a chance to defend his dad against Wade and takes it, earning his stripes to join his dad for the rest of the journey, till Wade is put on the train.

To get to the train station requires a tricky lunging through flimsy back doors, dashing through wooden buildings, crouching and duck-waling behind stacks of boxes and barrels, and racing around carts, etc, you get the picture. At times, a handcuffed Wade actually has to pull Evans along because of Evans’s partially wooden leg, the result of a wound he suffered in the Civil War. Early in the movie, you see him limping from time to time, but you forget about his bum leg watching him running and leaping around as he and Wade make their way under fire to the train when it pulls in. Evans’s son tries to thwart the driven Foster from killing his father and possibly rescuing Wade by stampeding a corral of cattle. It appears that that’s the end of Foster. But no, that’s not how these movies work. Sure a hundred or so head of cattle knocking you down and bumping you against rough wooden railings can mess you up, which shows on Foster’s bloody face and clothes (Where did he get that spiffy, tight-fitting, white leather jacket with the stylized tailored shoulders?).

I rarely if ever tear up at Westerns, but the final scene had me reaching for my Kleenex. When you see it, I guarantee you will, too. The film's no tear-jerker; the tears are earned.