as solid, violent, and sophisticated a Western you'll see this year

Rating: 8/10 (11 September 2007)

The best western I've seen since the Proposition - which might not mean a lot since it's been a year since that film came out. But while Mangold's film may not have the existential resonance and eerie quality of the Aussie feature, we do have a better-than-average feat of genre film-making, loaded with great machismo presence (and heart), and a feat of storytelling uncompromised by muddled metaphors or Leone copycatting. It's very violent and without too much hope for the characters on the surface by film's end. It looks as though things have suddenly, surprisingly turned against the conventions (whether this is different from the original I can't say having not seen the 1957 film version yet). But underneath, there's a moral code that is evoked brilliantly.
The premise is as simple as they come for a story based on a short- originally written by Elmore Leonard early in his career- for a pulp western magazine. Gang outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe, his best performance in quite a few years, even if he could potentially play it in his sleep) is captured without the help of his posse (with icy fast-shooter Ben Foster as second in command), and is sent to be hung for numerous crimes and murders in Yuma. Dan Evans (Christian Bale, terrific as always, usually in silence) is a rancher who is in danger of losing his land if he doesn't get enough money together, and so takes the job of being part of the group (among them an old and weary and hard-ass Peter Fonda as Bryon McElroy). It's a tale where good versus evil should be well defined, but this where the conventions sort of get muddled, which is really what starts to make 3:10 to Yuma more than just a star vehicle or blockbuster of the week.
Beneath the veneer of each man lies truths that haunt them, and have made either one into how they are in the present. Wade is calculating and evil, but somehow has a level of honor beneath his countless sins; watch him tell of reading the bible cover to cover as a kid after getting it from his mother, and then never seeing her again. Or how Evans got his war wound, how he hides that simple fact from his children, even from his son (William Lerman, maybe the most limited performance as his sole motivation is 'I'll go with you', though still does it well enough to act with the best of them). There's some level of understanding that forms between Wade and Evans, and amid the countless gun battles and wounds faced against Apaches, train workers, and the whole town of Contention, loaded with gun power, as the train is soon on its way, neither man can ever quite give in, aside from what the end goal entails.
Mangold directs this picture like a pro in the tradition of someone like Howard Hawks- a few really good scenes (the climactic battle through the town, a dinner scene between captured Wade and the Evans family, and maybe the scene between Wade and Evans in the hotel room, among maybe one other I can't pin down), no bad ones. It's interesting to read the only substantial criticism of this 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma being too long, where the original was just right in length. But nothing seems to be fattening to the storyline here, and the script keeps things moving along at a very tense pace while never stopping for a moment of characterization, like one of the campfire scenes. And giving enough breathing room for actors like Crowe and Bale allow for them to do what they do best.
In this near-classic feature that works as a very respecting throwback to tragic tales of doomed men in the guise of typical Hollywood product, while working finitely as a pure action movie for today's audiences, 3:10 to Yuma is taut, precise and superlative as a "guy" flick.