3:10 to Yuma (2007)
I think 3:10 to Yuma was the movie director James Mangold had on his mind when he shot the star heavy Cop Land in 1997. Both films deal with an elemental man’s man morality set against a backdrop that doesn’t really give a whit about such things, and both are grounded in the old school meat and potatoes pleasures of the films of yesteryear. The kind of movies your grandparents say they don’t make anymore, but then again, they usually haven’t seen a movie since then to begin with.
Cop Land didn’t totally work. It had its moments, but Mangold’s sensibility seemed a bit quaint for a film that employed half of Martin Scorsese’s repertory (it bought into Stallone’s Marty character a little too whole heartedly). Walk the Line, another Mangold film, is immensely entertaining, but it left me wondering why a man as large and looming and conflicted as Johnny Cash was reduced to the same musical biography we’ve been seeing for twenty, thirty, forty years.
3:10 to Yuma fits just right. It’s kind of a square picture, and its not surprising in the least, but its unsurprising and square in a way that you find yourself craving after years of pumped up Hollywood “entertainment”. Sadly, a film that so firmly puts its eggs in one basket (”story”) very nearly qualifies as an art film these days.
We know the scenario going in. Russell Crowe is an outlaw. Christian Bale is the desperate man who finds himself helping turn Crowe over the authorities for an amount of money that would’ve been irrestible to most men those days, much less one who’s about to lose his ranch to corrupt townsfolk.
Crowe’s going to get all of the attention for this picture, he’s refound his slow burn authority, but Bale is the performance that saves the film, and keeps it afloat. On paper, Bale has the Stallone Cop Land part, the relentlessly moral, gimpy guy who can’t catch any breaks (Mangold needs to get over this relentless urge to stack the deck) but Bale has too much something, drive, electricity, to play to the audience in such a way. Bale explores the character’s less sentimental, more truthful, side and hints at an ego that might be the driving force of some of his hardship.
Crowe is most certainly back here (after the sluggish, hypocritical A Good Year) but the part of outlaw Ben Wade is a bit more catering to “cool” than Bale’s. Crowe gets all of the best lines, the majority of the better stunts, and (this is a problem) is not even really that much of a bad man. I know what some of you are thinking: Chuck is rebelling against complexity and shading in a film! No. I’m (mildly) rebelling against muddled storytelling born out of the ego of one of our biggest (and most talented) stars.
I’d usually give it a pass, but Wade’s “I’m a bad man, but I know it and I’m educated and sexy and only kill ones who deserve it” bit causes a few problems in the third act, particularly the climax. 3:10 to Yuma builds to a nifty us against the town shoot out, but you may find yourself contemplating the point of it all, particularly when Crowe could just call the whole damn thing off.
This issue is far from a deal breaker though. 3:10 to Yuma is a Hollywood genre movie that’s very well served by Mangold and his cast, and its as purely entertaining as anything I’ve seen this year. Mangold has found his nitch, and I for one vote that he sticks to it. Besides, star ego was as much a part of “Old Hollywood” as anything else.
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