A good movie ruined by a ludicrous ending.

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2007)

Reading many of the comments it seems obvious these days that all a movie needs is: good cinematography; good acting; interesting plot; plenty of action. That hooks most people nowadays. The fact that it lacks intelligent plotting, doesn't allow for any semblance of rational belief, and treats the audience as if it's stuck in dreamy adolescence, doesn't seem to matter.
Granted it's great acting by Crowe, Bale, and Peter Fonda. Great evil theatric posturing by Ben Foster. The cinematography is great, and it's based on one of the great "thinking man's" cowboy movies ever made. So how could they screw this up. Simple: by deciding, at the end, to pander to the audience that likes action, and is either too lazy too think, or finds attention to concentration bothersome to the base pleasure of being led by the nose.
*****************SPOILER*********** Up until the last twenty minutes the movie does fair homage to the original, and in some ways fleshes it out satisfactorily. To keep up interest there is way too much escaping/recapturing going on. Crowe gets captured initially not by some fluke, but by his own stupidity, which puts a crimp in the notion that he is a fiendishly clever sociopath. Then he escapes way too many times from supposedly hardened men, who never seem to get it that the best way to transport a sociopath is heavily bound. The fact that he gets recaptured again simply diminishes the "invincible" reputation he has as a badman.
But this is all signaling us for the end when Bale is left as the only one standing to take Crowe to the train station. The gang of seven sits atop their horses outside the hotel in which they are holed up. They sit bunched up - sitting targets - but no that would be too easy. Bale must take Crowe not only past them but half the town that has been offered bounty money. So how does he do it? The Director decides to turn the movie completely upside down and have Crowe aid and abet Bale in running the gauntlet. Not only aid and abet but kill off every last one of his own gang for pissing him off and shooting Bale.
I am so tired of having to sit through movies and suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the movie. I'm willing to do it when the movie doesn't take itself serious, but this one tries to pass itself off as a morality play, and Crowe's latter day conversion to Robin Hood simply insults probability.