The Train Was Late.

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2011)

The train was late and frankly, the way this movie dragged out, I wasn't surprised. Probably the wrong kind of baddies were on the line.
Its original 1950's version never struck me as being a classic by any definition. More a poor man's 'High Noon'. But this remake tries to do better, and for the most part succeeds. Though it does this by robbing a few ideas from other westerns. To begin with, there's a raid upon an armoured stage-coach with a reverse-mounted Gatling-gun. It's an idea straight from 'The War Wagon'.
Russell Crowe is Wade, captured leader to a bunch of outlaws. Christian Bale is Evans, the down-at-heel rancher with cash-flow issues who accepts a job too many. Taking pattern from Eastwood's revival, there is a lot more attention to period detail and authentic ambiance - oil-lamp lit interiors, scruffy attire and so on. Which makes for a believable but all too gloomy view. Crowe trades his Roman or nautical trappings for those of a western outlaw and offers-up his stock character delivery. It could just as easily be 'LA Confidential' with horses. Somebody needs to tell him that there's more to acting than just putting on clothes. It would also help if he discovered a voice. Another 2 hours of General Maximus Gruntus gets a bit too much for my ears. Bale, on the other hand, is as Baleful as ever: Believable, but not exactly likable. He needs to laugh once in a while. I grew up with westerns that were almost operatic in their presentation - a concept even Sergio Leone endorsed despite his many modernisations. This 'new realism' needs a very careful hand to make it work as well. Eastwood managed the transition, but this one throws a shoe.
A lot of the movie entails a chase. The small posse escorting Wade overland to catch the train is seldom more than a couple of steps ahead of his gang, now led by a second-in-command about as homicidally-disposed as 'The Terminator'. Along the way, there are various 'issues' and psychological 'conflicts' most of which are scarcely believable. You just don't let a dangerous villain have his hands free, to attack his escorts, snatch guns and shoot them. It would be daft enough once - but 3 times? I mean; c'mon! And if he talks too much (hints of Hannibal Lecter) - you just gag him.
Towards the end, the gang catch up whilst they're waiting for the train, and there's the sort of preposterously over-the-top and frankly unbelievable shoot-out that made 'The Wild Bunch' so memorable. Even here it's taken to excess. The ending is also turned on its head.
I never understood the psychology of a hardened villain facing life imprisonment at the very least - and more likely the gallows - suddenly experiencing a 'Damascus episode' and assisting the man who would take him their. It seemed implausible in the first movie and no less so here.
What the movie does well is commendable. But it's basically a hodge-podge of other ideas shunted together to make an over-long, excessively violent melodrama. It's like a fantasy staged in a museum.
Worth a watch for the good bits, but not exactly collectible. Try 'Last train From Gun Hill'; it's a similar theme but in the grand 1950's operatic style.