A great film and one of the years best

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2007)

Its been a while since I saw this and I'm still trying to find some words.
The plot concerns a noted outlaw, Russel Crowe, caught in a small town. He has to be taken to a larger city with a rail connection where he will put him on the titled train. Along for the ride is a rancher, played by Christian Bale, a slightly disgraced man with a family and mounting debts who's trying to do the right thing even though his kids and his wife don't understand him or his choices. As the men get closer to the train the run into several obstacles, not the least of which are Crowe's men who are very intent on freeing their leader, no matter what the cost.
A remake of a 1957 "classic" western this updated retelling adds some shading and some violence for a creation that is uniquely its own. Violence aside this film seems to belonging more in the classic era of the western. However "old fashioned" though it maybe in the telling (as someone said in a review its clear that no one told director James Mangold that the western was dead), the film benefits from the muddying of the moral sensibilities since things are never as clear as the may have been in a by gone time.Why anyone is doing anything is never clear, even the hero played by Bale who is clearly carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana. This grayness helps to make the good guys seem better and the bad guys worse since we know that what ever choice they have made its at great personal expense.
Some are hailing the film as a classic, others are liking it but not loving it. I'm really confused about it. To be certain the film is close to being, if not on, the list of best films of the year (I also keep wanting to use the term mythic, especially since it seems to shift into that mode at times). The question for me is whether its a classic or not. I've been going back and forth on the subject for the couple of hours and I still don't have an answer, which is why I can't really write about the film, even though it deserves to deeper discussion.