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3:10 to Yuma
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: September 9th, 2007

Summer is over, and going to the movies gets a lot more interesting this time of year. But I suspect the season may have peaked this weekend with 3:10 to Yuma, a nearly impossible act to follow. I can’t really say much about this movie without the unfettered use of enthusiastic language and sentiments, so brace yourself, folks. The acting, story and dialogue are all outstanding (which happens occasionally in movies) but the word “outstanding” doesn’t begin to describe the elusive, mystical combination of solemnity and fun that for the last 40-years-or-so has separated classic films like The Godfather from garden variety Academy Award winners. That’s the kind of satisfaction 3:10 to Yuma provides. It’s brilliant, powerful, poetic—worthy of your favorite superlative descriptor. Folks, you’re going to love this movie.

The film stars Russell Crowe, whose return to high-profile cinema is most welcome, and who may yet forgive us for undervaluing 2005’s Cinderella Man. In 3:10 to Yuma, Crowe plays Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw who happens to be more fully aware and alive than all of the allies and adversaries who surround him. Wade has an artistic hand, a Zen mind, and a weakness for keeping himself amused. That weakness eventually gets him captured, and scheduled to depart on the 3:10 train to Yuma, where he’ll be hanged in public.

It’s no secret that Crowe is a great actor, even if he does throw the occasional cell phone at the occasional concierge. But meanwhile, Crowe’s Yuma co-star, Christian Bale, is going to make a screen icon of himself whether anyone notices or not. Bale has certainly provided cinema’s most convincing Bruce Wayne to date, and he may have raised his profile a notch last year with that dark, grave performance in The Prestige. Now, sharing the screen with Crowe, he gives a classic performance as Dan Evans, a hard luck, crippled rancher who, desperate for money to keep his land and family intact, joins the posse to deliver Ben Wade to the gallows. Evans is incorruptible, and living in a moral wasteland, which makes him despised by just about everyone, including his own son. But as the posse gradually weakens, and as Wade’s gang of outlaws closes in to retrieve their leader, Evans proves himself the only man with guts enough to fulfill the mission. His tenacity earns him Wade’s deepest admiration, and the dynamic between the two men leads to a climax of epic bloodshed, humanity, and irony.

With its open skies and prairie landscapes, the authentic grit of its towns and characters, and the gravitational descent of its narrative toward an inevitable conclusion, 3:10 to Yuma will surely draw comparisons to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. But this film is equally evocative of another seminal early-nineties masterpiece—The Silence of the Lambs. Ben Wade is more like Hannibal Lecter than any screen villain before or since. He’s amoral, lethal, artistic, philosophical, extremely relaxed, and so persuasive with words he’s a menace even in shackles. He’s toying with everyone around him, even repeatedly conceding the advantage in order to keep himself entertained. Like Lecter, he values courtesy above all else, and like Lecter, he’ll happily dispose of anyone lacking in that virtue. This character is going to strike an eternal chord with viewers, most of whom, if they’re afflicted with the human condition, can stomach grand injustices, but find pettiness too much to bear. Meanwhile, with a superhuman integrity that slowly re-assembles those around him, Dan Evans will have even more resonance. Between these two archetypal men, Evans is quietly, and humbly, the rarer creature. He is tough, fearless, and hell bent on preserving his self-respect.  

If it sounds profound, that’s because it is. What’s more, 3:10 to Yuma equips itself with a powerful sense of myth. The characters are all preceded by their reputations, and at the same time they all seem to wear their fates outwardly, so that their entire lives—past, present, and future—exert force on any given moment, even while those moments provide clues and motivations that describe the greater arc. Better still, the events that unfold in this film do so because they must, because the forces at work demand it. There are no plot contrivances here, only characters, choices, and consequences. It’s how great stories have always been told, and it’s why, when it comes to the human condition, we look to works of fiction to find the truth.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld