The Most Beautiful Aspect of This Film is Easily Missed

Rating: 9/10 (14 September 2007)

Westerns are by their nature allegorical territory. But this film hides away a secret that if you're not careful, you may miss. I picked up the clues somewhat by accident, but as the film unfolded I began to more fully understand the Russell Crowe character and the Christian Bale character in a way that made the film impossible to misinterpret. Fathers almost always want the best for their sons. They want to protect them from harm, disappointment and loss. But in the final analysis, when everything else is taken away, even a bad father wants his son to have someone in his life he can count on, someone worth looking up to. In the final moments, when a father knows that the only things he's given his progeny are the worst parts of himself, and he has an opportunity to give him something truly good he'll do anything to provide that gift. Even when his nature is to destroy everything that matters to him. How could a man, who by every measure is a failure, not be a hero when he stands as a giant in the eyes of the boy he calls a son? Who could ask for a better father than the man that walked Ben Wade to the train station when no one else would? A man could not ask for a better Father for his son than that.