Reconstructing the Western For a Doubtful Future

Rating: 7/10 (10 September 2007)

I was 12 when I first saw 3:10 to Yuma with Van Heflin and Glen Ford. Two years later, something of a remake appeared. Kirk Douglas was trying to get a somewhat companionable Anthony Quinn to jail in Last Train to Gun Hill.
The star vehicle state of modern Hollywood films is now making it more difficult to remake these western morality tales.
Christian Bale, a desperate rancher on the verge of bankruptcy and facing foreclosure of his mortgage is supposedly the lead in the new 3:10, but Russell Crowe playing the outlaw Ben Wade is the real lead. Fifty years ago, Van Hefflin played the Nester making some money on the side to take Glen Ford to jail at Yuma prison.
Looked at closely, both 3:10s and Last Train are buddy westerns. The films are about a pair of hard men gradually warming up to one another, becoming friends. But there's a lot more company on the stagecoach to Contention to catch the train this time.
There's Christian Bale as the failed farmer Dan Evans looking for some quick money for delivering Wade. His son William complicates things by following Wade and his father without the old man's permission. Also along for the ride is a grizzled, gray and wrinkled Peter Fonda, as a Pinkerton Security Man who has been a mercenary in many a Pinkerton black bag job.
Fonda is gut shot early on in the game, during an elaborate stage robbery, in which the Pinkertons have equipped the stagecoach with armor, a Gatling gun, and Pinkerton men to guard the payroll. Normally being gut shot in a Western means certain death. But the law of the Western has been abrogated here so Fonda can get something more than a cameo in the film. A Veterinarian in nearby Bigsby removes the bullet so Fonda can stay on. Later though, Fonda becomes disposable. Wade, responding to Fonda's goading, gets an opportunity to rough Fonda up some, then casually throw him off a convenient cliff to his death.
That's another problem here. Since Russel Crowe is the lead, he gets special privileges in his role as an outlaw. He makes sketches of benign birds, betrays knowledge of books he's read, chides the Pinkertons about their lack of education and a philosophy. This leader of an outlaw band is a renaissance man. Worse, when Bale runs into trouble evading Wade's gang, which is trying to spring their boss, Wade sometimes changes horses midstream and helps him. This happens so often, the audience is in doubt about just who is going to be the hero of this horse opera, Evans or Wade. Who's going to leave the larger mark on impressionable William Evans, Ben Wade or Will's father Dan?
All through the film, the dwindling group delivering Wade to the Train, is dogged by Wade's gang. But good guy opportunities are missed. The marshal of Contention has enough firepower in the hotel room to simply scatter gun all seven of Wade's men on the street below. But the gang starts offering money to all the murderers and scalawags in town to help recover their boss, Hearing this, the Marshal and his deputies throw in the towel, put down their weapons and are wiped out to the man, by Wade's gang, when they step outside.
After this, Dan Evans and the last Pinkerton are having their own doubts. But Evans sticks it out and agrees to deliver Wade to the train. All along the trail, Evans and Wade have been trading bits of their pasts to one another, warming up in their respect for one another and warming up audience respect too. Now they've made it to the train station. Lead is flying everywhere and both are revealing secrets. Evans dumps the last chapter of his biography on Wade, who admits that he's been to Yuma twice before and escaped both times. This leaves a relieved Evans off the hook for Wade's proposed hanging at Yuma.
Wade is enthused about his new pal too. So enthused that he resolves to help deliver himself to the train. Just then Wade's second in command Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) arrives and pumps five bullets into Evans, meaning its more than a flesh wound this time: its certain death. Wade amazes the audience after being handed his gun and holster, by promptly shooting all five of his remaining associates to death in an elaborate bit of gun play, in anger for the wanton killing of his new friend, even though Dan isn't quite dead yet. Wade's son Will watches his father slowly die, then turns his colt on Wade, who has one in his own hand. But Ben turns his pistol over to the lad with some consoling words, then hops cheerfully aboard the train to Yuma.
My own thinking is that the Western died in the Sixties when Americans realized they had no more frontiers in the face of the endless Cold War and the failure of the war in Vietnam. The appearance of two westerns in a single weekend- the other one is Shoot 'Em Up With Clive Owen and Paul Giamati- causes one to reflect that Americans may be rethinking their destinies. Maybe we can conduct a war while spending what we want at the mall, enduring a sub prime lending crisis, with Wall Street demanding lower interest rates to lift the Stock Market. We can do it, that is, while undercutting the moral firepower of our new Westerns. We're not likely to win many wars this way either.