3:10 to Yuma wastes no time in reminding the viewer that the Old American West was not a pleasant place. And for the next two hours, the movie treads even further into the bleak places of the landscape and the human heart. Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a struggling Arizona rancher and wounded Civil War vet who decides to earn some much-needed cash by joining an ad hoc posse to escort notorious bad guy Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a train that will take him to Yuma to face trial and certain execution. Wade is a charming sociopath who’s fond of quoting Scripture and sketching the women he beds and he wastes no time in plotting various ways to escape his captors. Both Crowe and Bale do a fine job here, giving nuance and depth to the stereotypical archetypes of the Western hero and villain.
The ending is something of a foregone conclusion, especially if you’re familiar with the conventions of the modern western. But it’s difficult to resist the movie’s gritty take on the genre’s familiar trappings. Stagecoach robberies. Cold-hearted bounty hunters. Gunfights in desolate little towns. None of these carry the odor of been-there-done-that. In fact, I’m willing to bet that this movie will spark a revival of the big-screen western, but any successors will be hard-pressed to match this film’s pitch-perfect mixture of plot and performance.
