Walrus Comix Film Review:
3:10 to Yuma

Once considered a vibrant centerpiece as a genre within the fabric of American cinema, the classical Western has lost much of its luster in recent decades. With its potential for nuanced character studies and violent resolutions, the genre has proved to be singularly captivating when handled with the requisite depth needed to move beyond parables involving men in black and white hats. In remaking the 1957 Glenn Ford vehicle 3:10 to Yuma, director James Mangold has crafted a worthy ode both to the original picture and the genre en masse buoyed by the masterful performances of lead actors and cinematic sparring partners Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Mangold utilizes the considerable skill of both actors in communicating the stories of two men who despite their social and familial networks ultimately recognize in one another a begrudging kinship borne of isolation.

Mangold (Copland, Walk the Line) is no amateur when it comes to dealing with complicated characters that carry with them both visible and unseen scars. 3:10 offers him another rumination on the ways in which overtly flawed characters deal with those characters whose demons lurk a bit deeper beneath their veneer. Bale plays a Civil War vet who carries the literal battle scars that have led to a figurative emasculation both in his ranch town and within the confines of his family home. Having been hobbled by the war and humbled by a drought which has plunged his family into the midst of economic oblivion, Bale plays rancher Dan Evans as much with his sunken cheekbones as he does with his hollow eyes in portraying a man quietly defiant in the face of apparent ruin but nonetheless powerless to escape it. His path is arbitrarily passed by Crowe’s Ben Wade, a gunslinger who brims with the requisite confidence in his abilities to always assume an outcome that will prove ultimately agreeable for him and few others. Sporting “The Hand of God” in his holster, Wade stands apart from the rest of his gang in his recognition of basic humanistic concepts despite the fact that he rarely employs such conceits in pursuing his often murderous exploits. His ability to even imagine such ideals at play isolates him from the rest of his crew (especially his ruthless second-in-command, played by a scene-stealing Ben Foster), but it allows him to connect with Evans in a manner that perhaps neither man fully comprehends at first glance. While the two men are about as diametrically opposed as possible in how they attempt to make their respective ways in the world, there is a common ground that emerges within the context of a distance they feel from everyone around them. In the hands of lesser actors and scribes, the movie could have easily descended into a dysfunctional sepia buddy flick, but Crowe and Bale do a marvelous job navigating a script that was initially based on a short story by pulp legend Elmore Leonard. Bale’s scenes with his wife and children ground his character in a way that gives his desperation via his willingness to transport Crowe to the prison train that runs to Yuma a tender resignation befitting a man ready to buckle under his own need for redemption. Crowe, meanwhile, lends his sociopath the kind of gravitas and charisma that at once makes him somewhat likable while hinting at a higher standard that his character almost tragically avoids as a general rule. Crowe often trades on his brutish physique, as he is almost uniquely unsculpted in leading man terms, but his most effective gestures are always the ones that transpire behind his heavy-lidded eyes. Bale joins Crowe as one of the big screen’s most instinctive talents, and their byplay is almost always a symbiotic study in onscreen harmonizing that allows both actors the opportunity to flesh out their respective roles.

As they make their way to the fateful train station, the two men do a dance of sorts in which neither man really gives much ground only to discover that metaphorical common ground. The contrast between the two characters is made all the richer for their shared journey, as the climactic mad dash towards Yuma reveals the ways in which both men’s lives and their ultimate destinations have become inextricably linked and altered as a result of that initial meeting. As with their first meeting, they remain primarily a family man and an outlaw, but the pursuit of that 3:10 train allows for the blurring of many of the distinctions between those extremes. Mangold’s vision combined with the talents of his lead actors gives 3:10 to Yuma the kind of vitality that once made the Western such a dominant art form, as his film offers a look at two men whose disparate manifestations of occasionally similar instincts make this cinematic jaunt entirely worthwhile.    

- Brant Miles