3:10 to Yuma<\/a> as I\u2019ve never seen the original \u2013 a mistake I will be rectifying.
\nSo for me 3:10 has to stand on its own two feet, a newborn blinking in the harsh light of the Wild West.\u00a0 This is no revisionist masterpiece in the vein of Eastwood\u2019s Unforgiven, rather it is a good old fashioned western, with a twist of modern day sophistication and none the worse for it.
\nBeing a Western we need a few things.\u00a0 For starters we need a cocky bad guy in a black hat and a humble good guy whose headgear is a few shades lighter.\u00a0 That\u2019ll be Russell Crowe as Ben Wade and Christian Bale as Dan Evans then.\u00a0 How about a comically na\u00efve doctor?\u00a0 The far too infrequently cast Alan Tudyk fits that bill.\u00a0 A posse \u2013 check!\u00a0 Hooker with a heart of gold \u2013 check!\u00a0 A ticking clock, a town without law and natives who don\u2019t warrant any more character than is required to have us cheering when they are mown down?\u00a0 Check, check and check again.\u00a0 It\u2019s all looking like business as usual for 3:10.\u00a0 The story itself revolves around a down on his luck civil war veteran who, in order to save his family from starvation and his ranch from repossession (an early nod to the current housing crisis?), volunteers to help transport a captured outlaw to the titular train which will take him to the gallows.\u00a0 Surprisingly it doesn\u2019t all go to plan\u2026
\nIt is the performances that lift this film above other genre pieces.\u00a0 Crowe once again shows his ability to portray a man who others would follow, this time not into war or onto the high seas, but through a series of carefully planned robberies.\u00a0 He plays Wade not as a blunt-instrument psychopath (that job is left to his scene stealing second in command played by Ben Foster) but as an artist, a careful conductor, an architect of evil deeds.\u00a0 He even has a hobby, sketching the beauty he sees in the world, in case we hadn\u2019t quite gotten the message!\u00a0 He is still more than capable of getting his hands dirty though, with a barely controlled rage always bubbling beneath the surface, something overlooked by some who interpret his sketches, intelligence and bible quoting antics as a sign that he is simply \u2018misunderstood\u2019.\u00a0 He is a bad, bad man and Crowe brings him to life.
\nBale on the other hand takes the route of less is more.\u00a0 He internalizes his way though the film as though determined to actually turn himself inside out.\u00a0 The contrast to the swaggering Crowe works brilliantly and makes the moments when he does reveal a little of his frustration bubble to the surface all the more interesting.
\nThe cinematography is beautiful, if perhaps a little two beautiful.\u00a0 It could have stood to have reflected the circumstances of the characters a little more fully, as seen in No Country For Old Men where the wide open spaces took on an oppressive, haunting tone.\u00a0 But this is nitpicking.\u00a0 Whilst not groundbreaking 3:10 to Yuma is a lot of fun and well worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reviewed by Richard Feilden When reviewing a remake of a film it is hard to ignore its predecessor.\u00a0 This is why one should never, no matter how great your ego, try to recreate a film like Psycho (I mean really Gus, what were you thinking?\u00a0 \u2018I guess Hitchcock was OK, but I think I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}