3:10 to Yuma
I went and saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday. It’s pretty good but not quite Tombstone (or even The Quick and the Dead, Russell Crowe’s first western) good. I enjoyed some of the dialog about right and wrong but it would have been more enjoyable if the ending had been different. I think my favorite line from the movie is when Christian Bale says that the $200 pension he got from the government wasn’t so he could walk away, it was so the government could walk away. He refuses the money from the railway because he is tired of letting people off the hook. He is going to finish his job and earn what he deserves even if it means risking his life to do it. The thing this movie really lacked was some good fun western shootouts. There is only one good shootout in the end and the tension in between is high, but relatively predictable. Rather than taking risks with who dies when, you are watching and thinking to yourself, “oh, here is where the next guy dies, wait for it, wait for it, there it is.” You also never see Bale’s character prove how good of a shot he is. All throughout the movie they talk about how he was a sharpshooter in the Union army and he obviously has a reputation as being a good shot, but all he uses is a shot gun and pistol and never makes any “impossible” shots. And then there is poor, poor Alan Tudyk. The last two times I’ve seen him in a movie he was playing the like-able comic relief who finally does something amazing to save the day and then gets killed. He saves the ship in Serenity, then gets harpooned by the Reavers. He hits a guy in the face in 3:10 to Yuma and then gets shot in the back. Hmm, is that some kind of sad typecasting? Bruce Willis always saves the day, Alan Tudyk always gets killed. Well, at least he faired better than Luke Wilson did. Anyway, 3:10 to Yuma is definitely worth seeing, just not quite as good as I hoped it would be.
