Three Hours Til Yuma?

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2008)

This basically could have been a good movie but that it stretches our belief at every turn. So much so that it becomes really absurd and, in the end, just plain too dumb for words.
Christian Bale plays a down-on-his-luck rancher who happens upon a bloody robbery, and later identifies bandit chief Russell Crowe, and volunteers to help the authorities escort the criminal to the far off train station. Bale's character is a crack shot and an acrobatically tough customer for a man with only one foot! Crowe tries his best to corrupt Bale, but to no avail. The ever-thinning group plods on to the train station, with the help of Bale's son, apparently the Superboy of the rancher set.
Crowe's gang is in pursuit in order to set him free. They are led by Ben Foster, excellent here in a variant of the Gene Wilder role in Blazing Saddles. Foster does a great job as a diminutive Doc Holiday-esq gunslinger who may have more than just gang loyalty for boss Crowe.
The movie ends with an Old West version of The Gauntlet, in which every gun in town is firing at Bale, and missing. Then, incredibly, in one of the worst motion picture endings in memory, Bale is shot dead, Crowe pays off his gang's loyalty by killing each of them, turns himself in, and leaves, but not before summoning his horse to follow the train. The assumption being, I guess, that having impressed everyone with his goodness, he will again escape on the animal after the train goes round a turn.
Well shot, well acted, poorly written twaddle.