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| Roger Ebert |
James Mangoldís ì3:10 to Yumaî restores the wounded heart of the Western and rescues it from the morass of pointless violence. The Western in its glory days was often a morality play, a story about humanist values penetrating the lawless anarchy of the frontier. It still follows that tradition in films like Eastwoodís ìUnforgiven,î but the audienceís appetite for morality plays and Westerns seems to be fading. Here, the quality of the acting and the thought behind the film make it seem like a vanguard of something new, even though itís a remake of a good movie 50 years old.
The plot is so easily told that Elmore Leonard originally wrote it as a
short story. A man named Dan Evans (Christian Bale), who lost a leg in
the Civil War, has come to the Arizona territory to try his luck at
ranching. Itís going badly, made worse by a neighboring bully who wants
to force him off his land. The territory still fears Indian raids, and
just as much the lawless gang led by Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), which
sticks up stagecoaches, robs banks, casually murders people and outguns
any opposition. Through a series of developments that seem almost
dictated by fate, Dan Evans finds himself part of a posse sworn in to
escort Wade, captured and handcuffed, to the nearby town of Contention,
where the 3:10 p.m. train has a cell in its mail car that will
transport Wade to the prison in Yuma and a certain death sentence.
Both Dan and Ben have elements in their characters that come under test
in this adventure. Dan fears he has lost the confidence of his wife,
Alice (Gretchen Mol), and teenage son, Will (Logan Lerman), who doubt
he can make the ranch work. Still less does Alice see why her
transplanted Eastern husband should risk his life as a volunteer. The
son, Will, who has practically memorized dime novels about Ben Wade,
idealizes the outlaw, and when Dan realizes the boy has followed the
posse, he orders him to return home. ìHe ainít following you,î Wade
says. ìHeís following me.î
Thatís an insight into Wade. He plays his persona like a performance.
He draws, reads, philosophizes, is incomparably smarter than the scum
in his gang. Having spent untold time living on the run with them, he
may actually find it refreshing to spend time with Dan, even as his
captive. Eventually the two men end up in a room in the Contention
hotel, overlooking the street, in earshot of the train whistle,
surrounded outside by armed men who want to rescue Ben or kill him.
These general outlines also describe the 1957 version of ì3:10 to
Yuma,î directed by Delmer Daves, starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin in
the roles of the rancher and the outlaw. The movie, with its railroad
timetable, followed the slowly advancing clock in ìHigh Noonî (1952)
and was compared to it; when I saw it in 35mm at Telluride in the
1980s, I thought it was better than ìHigh Noon,î not least because of
the personality shifts it involves.
 Mangoldís version is better still than the 1957 original because it has
better actors with more thought behind their dialogue. Christian Bale
plays not simply a noble hero, but a man who has avoided such risks as
he now takes, and is almost at a loss to explain why he is bringing a
killer to justice, except that having been mistreated and feeling
unable to provide for his family, he is fed up, and here he takes his
stand. Crowe, on the other hand, plays not merely a merciless killer,
although he is that, too, but a man also capable of surprising himself.
He is too intelligent to have only one standard behavior that must fit
all situations, and is perhaps bored of having that expected of him.
Westerns used to be the showcases of great character actors, of whom I
was lucky enough to meet Dub Taylor, Jack Elam, Chill Wills, Ben
Johnson and, when she wasnít doing a million other things, Shelley
Winters. ì3:10 to Yumaî has two roles that need a special character
flavor and fills them perfectly. Peter Fonda plays McElroy, a
professional bounty hunter who would rather claim the price on Ben
Wadeís head than let the government execute him for free. And Ben
Foster plays Charlie Prince, the second-in-command of Wadeís gang, who
seems half in love with Wade, or maybe Charlieís half-aware thatís heís
all in love. Wade would know which and wouldnít care, except as
material for his study of human nature.
Locked in the hotel room, surrounded by death for one or the other, the
two men begin to talk. Without revealing anything of the plot, let me
speculate that each has found the first man he has met in years who is
his equal in conversation. Crowe and Bale play this dialogue so
precisely that it never reveals itself for what it really is, a process
of mutual insight. One test of a great actor is the ability to let
dialogue do its work invisibly, something you can also see in next
weekís ìIn the Valley of Elahî with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize
Theron. Too many actors are like the guy who laughs at his own joke and
then tells it to you again.
James Mangold first came into view with an extraordinary movie named
ìHeavyî (1995). His ìWalk the Lineî (2005) won an Oscar for Reese
Witherspoon. To remake ì3:10 to Yumaî seems an odd choice after such
other modern films as ìGirl, Interrupted,î but the movie itself proves
he had a good reason for choosing it. In hard times, Americans have
often turned to the Western to reset their compasses. In very hard
times, it takes a very good Western. Attend well to Ben Wadeís last
words in this movie, and whom he says them to, and why.
ï
Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, is a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Sun-Times.
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