Sometimes the line between good and bad run close together.

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2007)

Nobody, from the director and writer, to the actors on the screen, put a foot wrong in this movie. Beautifully shot, with an unobtrusive music score and a deep and powerful story, this is one of the best and most intelligent movies I have seen this year.
Crow and Bale are perfectly cast, whereas Bale and Cruise (originally wanted for the part of Ben Wade), would have been a disaster in my opinion. I can't look at Cruise on film without thinking of him jumping up and down on a couch like a performing monkey, so his image has been wrecked in my mind.
OK. The story.
Bale plays the part of a small time farmer (Dan Evans) caught up in circumstances that overwhelm him but give him a chance to rise above what fate has handed to him. It is a part that Bale plays to perfection. His role is that of the good guy trying to make a honest days living in a corrupt world full of greed. Opposite him is Crow. Rotten, vicious, ruthless, smart and very dangerous, because he is so smart. Yet, each are two sides of the same coin. Were past circumstances different for these men, it would be easy to believe that each of these two characters could have turned out like the other. It is this fascinating and deep idea that makes the story work so well.
Watching the interplay between these two main characters is the farmers son (played superbly by Logan Lerman) William Evans and throughout, you get the feeling that whatever happens to his father will determine the way the boy develops. A fact that is as true today as it was in the time of the old west that this story is set in. Barely trying to conceal the contempt the boy feels for his father, he is drawn to the exciting world of thief and killer, Ben Wade (Crow). Though I long for the day when Hollywood will once again portray fathers as decent and hard working men, this movie does not sink to the level of dad bashing that so many other productions do. The boy has a boys understanding and no move is made to comment on it one way or the other. That is a mark of the excellence of the writing. The audience is given the honour of being smart enough to work that out. In Hollywood movies today, that is a rare honour indeed.
Into Dan and Williams already hard life crashes Ben Wade and his gang of killers and robbers. Abandoned by his mother as a child and cynical to the point of the near psychopathic, Wade has no time for sentiment. Women are used and discarded. Men are useful if they do what he says, but no use if they do not. As head of his gang, Ben Wade is more a lion tamer than a leader of men and he knows it. He has trained them the way circus people train dangerous animals and they do his will right, or they don't make it. his manipulation skills are finely honed and he uses them well to figure out others and find their weak spots. Yet, despite all of these character flaws, his intelligence and respect for bravery in others manages to make him a likable villain.
Almost hidden in the background of this story there is a thread running through it that intelligent viewers will pick up on and hopefully think about. That thread is the vital importance of family life and the need for all of us to make certain we allow space for parents to be able to make a good job of bringing up their kids. Raising children is too important a job to be left to governments and no matter how much they try to take over that role, they should be resisted. If not, what you see in this movie is what you get. Fathers must be cut some slack and mothers supported, not by government alone, but by all of us. We have to end the cynical, hate filled attitudes of many of our young, by teaching them that law abiding parents are good people and not weaklings. We also have to tell governments, in no uncertain terms, to take their grubby hands off of our kids and family life. Stop listening to Oprah, parenting books and tapes and start listening to granny and granddad is my advice.
All in all this is a great movie and one that deserves to win Oscars all around. I doubt it will, but I hope I am wrong. Oscars these days tend to be tools of politics and those that are not go to movies that are full of sentimental slush. Rarely, it seems, do films like this get the recognition all deserve.
The tension in this movie is wonderfully built up by the director and writer alike. At no point does it have one of those Hollywood moments of sheer idiocy, where one of the characters does something superhuman and instantly kills the believability of the story. No strange camera angles to ruin the flow and jar the mind and no screaming music to distract you from the action on screen. Just plain and simple good craft throughout, with superb supporting roles from the rest of the cast.
I give this 9 out ten. Excellent work all round.