What a train wreck of a movie !

Rating: 1/10 (16 August 2010)

Whilst the original adaption of the Elmore Leonard story is a nice B-movie, the re-make is a D-script (if D at all ...) filmed with an A-budget and starring a totally miscast "hero" Russel Crowe.
My God, what a turkey! I have just seen the re-make on TV out of interest, so I could compare todays filmmaking with the old semi-classic. I didn't expect much, but what I got was even less than I could have expected.
I know, yeah, a really good western is probably the toughest movie to make (and the last time Hollywood succeeded in doing so was OPEN RANGE and before that Eastwood did one of his best works with UNFORGIVEN), because the settings of the genre are limited and you can't have that much "big/expensive scenes" with explosions, car chases (smile), etc, so you have to rely to a reasonable/good story and some interesting characters, but both is totally lacking here. In fact the makers of this re-make didn't trust the story at all and threw in all kinda over-the-top action-scenes, which just look much too implausible to be taken seriously.
The character of Russel Crowe and especially one of his gang-members is despicable, but of course having a leading man like Russel Crowe (who gives the label "wooden acting" a new meaning), Hollywood can't show him as filthy criminal, but needs to build a hero out of him. So the movie takes a good time developing that the people he has killed and kills "deserve" their fate. It's just ridiculous - and sorry for moralizing - that Crowe/Wade killing a member of the posse with a fork (!) gets him just a medium-severe beating. The same goes for his next victim: in fact the only above average-interesting character in the movie, the Pinkerton-man played by Peter Fonda, is characterized a good half-hour as the most evil person imaginable (by a moralizing (!) Crowe) to be then thrown off a cliff for good sake and what happens to Crowe: nothing again! Come on, I hate it when scriptwriters think I am an idiot, taking sh-- for gold.
And Crowe is established as some kinda good (!) anti-hero, about whom the boy fantasizes as being a morale person, not totally evil. That's ludicrous and I don't see how somebody, who kills and destroys merciless, can have a good side or be worshiped?? When LEONE had an evil character in his western, he established that right away, of course with a portion of cynicism, for example like in GOOD, BAD, UGLY (EASTWOOD being "good", Lee van Cleef being "bad"), but this 3:10 TO YUMA re-make does in fact take the good side of Wade indeed seriously.
And to "balance" that, the movie does of course need somebody really "evil" (to establish how "good" Wade is in comparison) and introduces a silly-staring gang-member, who lets somebody burn inside a carriage. That scene is especially ludicrous, because that just would not have happened in any decent western, it's totally against the "rules of the genre". Near gore-like scenes like this don't fit into a western, and it doesn't have anything to do with "widening the boundaries" of the genre to put in repulsive scenes like this one.
As I already mentioned, on top of all that Crowe is totally miscast. Not for a second do I believe his "character" as an outlaw, he just looks "too good", too well-fed with his puffy face (Mr. Crowe, stop eating junk food!) and too contemporary with his "I don't like fat" (haha!) eating-habits. Of course somebody like him cites the bible and tries to philosophize, which probably should establish the intellectual side of the evil. Yeah, in "modern"-day Hollywood it has become kinda "politcal correct" to have the bad guy being a misunderstood intellectual with a hard upbringing ... hey, come one, that can't be meant serious (but it indeed is!) ?? Of course, compared to that (the lesser star) C. Bale looks like a stupid farmer, whilst in a good script, if there would be some moralizing, then it would fit (T)HIS character ...
And the ending ... well, I think I can skip that, many other posters on the IMDb have already pointed out how silly/stupid/unfitting it is (btw, Elmore Leonard doesn't like the changed ending either).
So ... another re-make which should have been avoided. It's sad, but Hollywood can't do any good genre movies anymore. People, who don't understand the western-genre, should simply stay away from it instead of ruining it even further!