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Director: James Mangold IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381849/ Starring: Christian Bale, Russel Crowe, Peter Fonda 3:10 to Yuma is a western movie about a poor pennyless rancher name Dan and an Outlaw named Ben Wade. Russel Crowe plays Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw who has robbed the Pinkerton armored wagon several times and now they want him hung. Capturing him shortly after the opening scene which is a pretty badass robbery scene complete with a Gattling Gun mowing down a pack of riders, they decide to put Ben Wade on the 3:10 to Yuma so he can go to prison and be tried and hung. Byron McElroy played by Peter Fonda asks for three men to help out. Dan, played by Christian Bale, the rancher who has already met up with Ben Wade and in the middle of settling a debt with him, volunteers to go because well Dan is poor. However Ben Wades blood thirsty gang is out to rescue him. The movies has some slow points within, but all in all this movies has some pretty good acting in it. The action at points moves to slowly, but the gun play when it shows up is fantastic. Much like Master and Commander I would give this movie an Oscar for best sound. The SFX in the movie are spectacular. The gun shots sounded realistic and the ambience of the scenes made you feel like the outwest. The acting in the movie was pretty great for some pretty huge stars and some pretty news ones as well. Ben Foster plays a great bad guy and he'll have you wanting him dead by the end of the movie. Alan Tudyk (AKA Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball) plays such a great character you almost can't even tell it's him. Being a huge fan of Western movies I thought this movie was pretty good, but the end of the movie had me disappointed and rolling my eyes. However there is a pretty nice twist at the end that makes up for parts of the ending itself. All in all this movie wont be for every one. Pros: Good Acting, great sound, great action sequences. Cons: Slow at times, roll your eyes moments, the ending. 4/5
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Sep 9, 2007 05:20
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3:10 to Yuma probably won't have huge box office success, it's already be relegated to the smaller screens in my local megaplex, and that's quite a shame. Not only is it a good western, it's a good movie and, unfortunately, a lot of people won't go see it due to it's setting alone. The movie features strong performances by character actors along with the usual quality work of Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Bale plays a beaten down farmer who wants to prove to the world, and his uppity teenage son, that he is worth a drat. Crowe is a notorious robber, with a lot of charm and intellect. The two play off each other nicely, even if their relationship is a bit of a movie cliche. The first act of the movie is a tad slow, it does feature a stagecoach robbery, but it's all to give the audience an idea of who the two men are before they cross paths. The second and final acts are stronger, feature more action, and show the pure ruthlessness of the western frontier. Unlike Agent019, I enjoyed the ending quite a bit. It showed how Crowe's thief had come to understand and respect the poor farmer who's trying to do right by his son. The final scenes were moving and left me with a bittersweet feeling. 4/5
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Sep 9, 2007 14:23
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Mostly a fairly decent movie, with solid performances from Bale and Crowe, and a great job by Ben Foster as Crowe's second-in-command. I didn't really have any problems with the pacing or storyline, but the ending stretched belief way too far. It felt like a schmaltzy piece of Hollywood tacked onto an otherwise gritty, unpretentious, and entirely reasonable western. 3/5
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Sep 16, 2007 18:36
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Quite simply, it's good filmmaking. I really liked the casting, especially Crowe as the outlaw. The movie nailed a number of things that it could have easily screwed up: for instance, the many exchanges of dialog between Ben Wade and the cast of "good guys" are always impressive, not forced or dull. The film is also deeply realistic. Although justice is served by the end, somewhat, there is no sense of a grand moral order of any sort. Religion factors into the movie but doesn't overwhelm it; at the end, it's a story about men doing what they think is right (or know is wrong). If you like Deadwood, or westerns in general, this is right up your alley. If you like seeing a bunch of men riding around doing manly things the way men used to do them, this is a good movie for you as well. However, the attention to character and the ambiguous morals of the movie prevent it from being just another period action film and give it a serious bite. I certainly felt like I got my money's worth. Special regards to Ben Foster for taking on the tired "psychopathic henchman barely in control of himself" role and making it exciting and fun to watch. 4.5/5
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Sep 17, 2007 03:32
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Finally got around to seeing this movie. Pros: Well acted as you may expect with Bale and Crowe leading the way. Action is equal or slightly above what you might expect from a Western. Pacing is faster than most Westerns yet works well with the dynamics of less upfront and more back loaded. Ben Foster is extremely well casted as Charlie Prince and almost steals the show with his energy and malice. Cons: Ending is less than to be desired, as it is fairly unrealistic. Would Wade really turn on his crew that quickly in reality? There wasn't much time to gain a meaningful relationship with Evans yet it is shot like they've become blood brothers. Overall Rating: 4/5 Generally those industry taglines blow, but there really hasn't been as good of a movie in this genre since Unforgiven and I for one would say since before then.
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Jan 12, 2008 08:29
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deadend posted:Cons: Ending is less than to be desired, as it is fairly unrealistic. Would Wade really turn on his crew that quickly in reality? There wasn't much time to gain a meaningful relationship with Evans yet it is shot like they've become blood brothers. Agreed. I watched this movie last night for the second time. It's a great western, I love the genre and wish there more movies that fit the western ticket. In Pirates 3, Matrix 3, and Transformers, I fell asleep during the End-All-Be-All-Action scenes near the end of each movie, but in 3:10 to Yuma, I felt it was beautifully inserted and tense and just, everything an action scene should be. Well done. 3.5/5
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Jan 14, 2008 21:52
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I've never really been a fan of westerns. This movie hasn't changed my opinion. It was laughably bad. Most characters made incredibly stupid or inexplicable decisions, and the "good guys" were entirely incompetent. It's a bit hard to cheer for the "good guys" when you're yelling "Stop being such idiots" at the screen.
Still, the movie wasn't painful to watch, and I MST3K'ed my way through much of it, which kept it from being a chore to watch. 2 out of 5. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jan 20, 2008 |
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Jan 20, 2008 04:28
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Perhaps my fault for buying into the hype a little, but I was pretty disappointed by this film. Given that it's 2007, I guess I was expecting something a little more gritty and mature than this turned out to be. By that I mean pick realistic/complex characters, realistic battle scenes, realistic or somehow compelling story, at least *one* of the above. The best way I think I can describe this is that it's a very modern Hollywood action-movie version of a by-the-books western. By which I mean it has no real problems with melodramatic lines if they add "emotional impact", no problem with absurdity if it makes for a "cool scene", no problem with black and white stock characters forming the mainstay of the cast. Gun fights are typical action movie stuff with 10,000 bullets fired from a few revolvers (perhaps one or two of which hit their mark) while people sprint through town, leaping from rooftops and diving for cover. A couple of explosions are even thrown in as if just to tick off a mark on a list. Also, what starts as a few groan-inducing lines and stock scenes seems to chug ever faster towards the ridiculous as the film goes on, both in terms of characters and story. People have blasted the ending as being unrealistic, but honestly at that point it seemed right on the mark as the absurdity parabola continued skyward. The performances of the two main characters are decent, but the characters themselves are often simply inconsistent, which is different to complexity since they seem to just toggle from one near-caricature to another. Overall, my advice is not to expect Leone or Eastwood. That was my mistake. Instead, expect a run-and-gun action movie in a western setting, with token violin-strings where appropriate. That's basically all you're given with this movie. 2/5
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Feb 9, 2008 07:23
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Despite the tremendous amount of logic gaps that everyone pointed out, I still liked the movie. Maybe it's because Bale and Crowe are two of my favorites, but I had a good time. Also, freaking Kevin Durand is in this and he's quickly becoming awesome (stealing the show in Lost, for one thing), so that helped. As a whole, the acting was what really stood out for me. Everyone seemed to be really trying, despite the meh story. The entire final 20-25 minutes is pure Hollywood cheese and really pushes your suspension of disbelief, but what are you gonna do? It was really fun to watch either way. 4/5 Also, What idiot would volunteer to be Wade's body double? Would it have been that hard to use a mannequin? If you ask me, THAT guy is the loving hero. He had to have known he would die horribly.
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May 23, 2008 02:55
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There is only one problem with this movie, and unfortunately it's the actions the characters take. After the first scene my eyes rolled constantly. It seemed that everyone decided to take the stupidest choice possible at every given moment. I really couldn't buy Russel Crow as an "anti-hero." The ending made me hate him even more. You just gunned down a group of people who are more loyal to you than anyone in any movie. At any point in time you could have just told them to stop chasing you. Congratulations on maximizing everyone's pain and misery. Now I'm not asking for 100% accuracy in a western, and when character motivations seems so incredibly far fetched the movie just fails for me. Everything else was spot on, which makes the script even more frustrating. 2.5/5
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Jun 6, 2008 15:21
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This movie was an exercise in frustrating mediocrity, and the only thing that saved it from ZERO is that Bale and Crowe are fun to watch in almost anything. The long list of illogical choices earlier in the thread are spot on, and it seems like this movie enjoys inflicting these moments of idiocy at regular intervals. As soon as you get over one stupid decision or action, and you begin to enjoy yourself a little bit, another stupid decision or action takes place. It's chinese water torture. It's like the 'Scary Movie' of westerns, where they make fun of all the stupid things that characters in westerns can do. I just want to re-iterate that it starts off dumb When you hear a gang member at the very beginning explain 'they have a gatling gun', you expect the robbery plan to involve some Machiavellian device to overcome this obstacle. You know what you don't expect? FOR THE loving GANG TO RUSH A COACH WITH A GATLING GUN. IT'S A GATLING GUN. IT WILL KILL YOU. And it does. Many gang members die in this single stupid completely un-thought-out robbery. In fact, I think they lost about half the gang right at the start of the movie. They insinuate that this was the 22nd robbery, which, at an average of five members lost per robbery, means that this must have been one hell of a big gang at some point. and ends dumb. Really dumb. - Hi, please shoot at the guys that captured our boss. OH NO, don't shoot at our boss! Well gently caress you, I'll just shoot you! Say, why is my boss running alongside his capture with such vigor and enthusiasm? - Hi, I've gotten you to the train. Victory! Oh, I'm shot. Four times. Now to cling stubbornly to life for a few minutes, even though everyone else in this movie has died from a single gunshot wound, no matter how innocuous. - Hi, thanks for rescuing me from my new best friend, for whom I was going to prison again, because I'm not all bad. There is some good in me, you see. Now I gotta shoot you for your touching loyalty. With a lot of dumb poo poo sandwiched in the middle. If you want to see a good Russel Crowe movie, watch 'LA Confidential'. If you want to see a good Christian Bale movie, watch 'The Dark Knight'. If you want to see a good western, watch one of Clint's for the hundredth time. Unless you want to see a sloppily scripted, cliche-ridden mess of an abomination, don't watch 3:10 to Yuma. It's very bad! 1/5 (Crowe and Bale share a laugh near the end, and if you imagine it's because they can't believe they got paid to read this poo poo, then it's a fun moment)
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Dec 27, 2008 05:07
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