Very well made film

Rating: 9/10 (10 September 2007)

This was unquestionably one of the best movies of the year so far. It was a well made remake with great acting from everyone including; Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Ben Foster and surprisingly Peter Fonda. The movie had the perfect feel and texture of Arizona in the late 1800's and was totally entertaining from the opening credits to the last scene. It must take a lot of work by a lot of people to have such attention to detail in a film, but I have to give most of the credit to the director, James Mangold, for getting the actors, props, animals, and music to all come together and work so well. One thing I did want to comment on was, there have been some people on this site that have said that Russell Crowe's character did not stay true to form or that they could not believe the changes. Well I have to disagree with that. It is true that he was a ruthless killer but there are three scenes that were foreshadowing for his actions. One was when he said that even bad guys love their mothers, another was when he said that she left him reading the bible for three days and never came back for him, and the last was when he said that he would not last long as leader of the gang if he wasn't totally bad. When he saw the relationship between Christian Bale, whom he admired, and his family, I think he knew that this was the real true value in life, and in that moment of "weakness" he knew what he had to do.