2007 DVD Review: 3:10 To Yuma

Many of the most well-regarded films of this past year dealt in some way with the images of the American frontier and man's* reaction to it. You had your neo-noir Western (No Country for Old Men), your revisionist Western (The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford), your West-as -metaphor-for-emotional-isolation Western (There Will Be Blood) and your West-as-metaphor-for-emotional-isolation-but-also-personal-liberation Western (Into the Wild). For all this wilderness and westy-ness, though, there was only one square-jawed, straight-shooting, old school Western released all year, James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma. This movie has a hell of a Western pedigree: it's a remake of a classic Glenn Ford film, which in turn was based on an Elmore Leonard short story. (Leonard was a very successful Western writer before he traded in sagebrush for city streets) Mangold does a good job of groking how Leonard uses dialogue to convey character and allow characters to size each other up. He's aided by Russell Crowe at his most rakish playing the bad-but-not-evil guy and Christian Bale projecting his usual glowering intensity as a struggling rancher who agrees to help escort Crowe to a prison train while being dogged by Crowe's gang of bandit pals. The film is made interesting by the way it handles one of the central questions of all Western films: how is order maintained in an environment with little enforceable law? The traditional answer of straightforward Westerns has been: through the rigorous maintenance of personal codes of conduct that transcend legality. 3:10 to Yuma echoes this consensus, but at the same time, the film takes pains to dissect just how and why these codes are transmitted and adhered to. The film also shows the essential madness at the core of these codes and the danger that they pose to those who insist upon adhering to them. At the same time, however, the film glows with respect for those with the courage to keep such codes, even in the face of certain death. The action elements of the film are pretty mediocre: the shootouts are competently portrayed, but the filmmakers seem too eager to keep the bullets flying. Action set-pieces pop up with mechanical regularity, and often without any rational justification. It's a shame, because the performances and dialogue are strong enough to hold attention in absence of constant leather slapping. In that way too, 3:10 to Yuma brands itself proudly as a four-square, no bullshit Western, if one with a bit more self-awareness than most.

Score: 7.6

* No, I'm not being sexist: all of these movies are sausage-fests.