3:10 to Yuma
3:10 to Yuma (2007) is a smokin’ western. As a western, it is, by definition, politically incorrect. It’s a man’s world. Only two women appear in the movie, the second stereotype being so minor that you’ll have trouble remembering her. Gretchen Mol does a fine job of playing the rancher’s wife, but this role too is a stereotype. It’s a violent world in which shooting someone is, as the bad guy says, like shooting a wild animal: the most important things are speed and accuracy. It’s a macho world with the strong moral message that a man should be resolutely honourable above all else—a strange message in today’s society.
If the political incorrectness does not bother you, you’ll be riveted by the story of a desperate small-time rancher and the rest of a posse trying to get an incredibly dangerous robber on the 3:10 train to the Yuma pen. The rancher takes on the job partly because he sorely needs the $200 not only to feed his wife and two sons but to ward off a hostile take-over by a bigger rancher. He also believes that citizens have to step up and risk something to see justice done. But on a deeper level, he has tired of endless small humiliations: receiving $198 compensation for having his leg shot off while retreating in the Civil War, taking up ranching in a dry climate because his youngest son has respiratory problems, barely being able to feed his family, being pressured to leave his land so a large land owner can acquire it and the profits from a future railway line, and feeling the subtle disregard of his wife and the contempt of his older son. What gives the story depth is this father-son relationship as both the father and the son grow. The father meets challenge after challenge until he is alone in bringing the prisoner to justice. The son grows in a more complicated way—from hostility and rebelliousness, to a jejune maturity, to respect for his father, to love for his father, to a surprisingly deep maturity. A kid who initially appears to be a minor character who is in the movie to characterize the protagonist turns out to be a major character who develops in a more complex way than film characters.
The acting is excellent. Christian Bales as the rancher is amazingly intense: the super close-ups of his embattled face are riveting. Some who follow Hollywood gossip might say that Russell Crowe as the wily villain is playing himself but he creates an interesting character perfectly in contrast to the strict moral code of the movie. I think it was Shakespeare who said you may smile and smile yet a villain be. When the rancher’s son says that the villain is not infinitely evil but has a piece of goodness buried somewhere, we do not know if this assessment is juvenile or insightful, and it turns out to be right.
This leads to the only weakness in the movie. When the rancher is valiantly attempting to hustle the prisoner to the train, the prisoner has a chance to strangle him and does not. Although you could do a complicated analysis to justify this decision, it basically rings false. The bandit has killed so many people on a whim, why not one more to gain freedom? This is followed by another scene that rings false: the leader of the outlaw gang turns on his men. Unfortunately, neither of these dubious scenes is essential for the ending of the movie. The rancher could have run his prisoner through the gun fire to the train without an interlude where he was nearly strangled, and the prisoner could have gotten on the train (knowing he could escape) without turning on the men who were trying to spring him free. This weakness takes the wind out of the sails at the end of the race, but until then it has been a captivating adventure.