Very impressive film on all fronts

Rating: 9/10 (8 September 2007)

3:10 to Yuma is easily one of the finest films I've had the privilege to see this year, and one of the best westerns to come along in quite a while. The film shines in all aspects, performances particularly, but the direction, cinematography, music, sound design (really startling gun shots, much more realistic than most films, sounds like a small detail but I found it made a big difference), and writing are all excellent.
I was genuinely surprised at how great the dialog was throughout the film, and its made all the better by the excellent actors delivering it. Doc Potter (played by the brilliant and hilarious Alan Tudyk) gets some of the best lines in the film in terms of humor, Wade (Crowe) has some great bad ass moments as well, but I was most impressed by Evan's (Bale) dialog throughout the film. It has a really wonderful way of cutting through to some really brutal truths that most films barely touch on or avoid altogether, and Bale's delivery is really, truly astounding. While I am a huge fan of Christian Bale, he's been on my bad side after Harsh Times (which I really, really, hated), but with this, he's back in my good graces, and I have a higher opinion of him than ever before. His intensity in this role is unbelievable. He doesn't have a great deal of dialog really, but he uses his silences to his advantage and really conveys an amazing amount of emotion through the desperate look on his face for most of the film. He has a short conversation with his wife before leaving to deliver Wade to the train station that is one of the finest pieces of acting I've seen in quite a while. I can't even describe the depths of Bale's performance, especially after seeing the film only once. This is certainly a film that requires multiple viewings, and I can only imagine how much better it would be on a second viewing.
Russel Crowe also turns out a really incredible performance, and this is coming from someone who is not much of fan of his. I have only really liked about half of what I've seen of Crowe's work, and while he obviously has talent, I always considered him rather overrated. This is the first time that I have really seen what other people have apparently been seeing in him for years. There is a certain simplicity and straight forwardness in his performance, he just is Ben Wade. The character is actually quite charming, in fact some of my favorite moments in the film were the stories he tells to his captors over the course of the journey about his visits to Dodge City, people he's killed, women he's been with , and the like. Watching the interactions between Wade and Evans is always fascinating as well.
While I have only recently gotten into watching westerns after seeing Once Upon a Time in the West not quite a year ago (I've been hooked since then), this is one of the finest I've yet to see. It evokes all the things one associates with classic westerns, but at the same time, it transcends them in some way which I hope to understand more once I am able to see it a few more times. Highly recommended.