3:10 to Yuma was to be the next in a long line of heralded Westerns, from High Noon to the John Wayne movies, into the Spaghetti Westerns of Leone and Eastwood, right up to Unforgiven (truly a landmark in film-making). It has the pedigree, with strong leads in Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, and a respectable director in James Mangold (though varied in his themes, with Walk the Line most recently, but Kate and Leopold in his closet). Yet, like so many films with such elevated hopes, it doesn't quite make it there.
The premise - Dan Evans (Bale) is a rancher in 1868 (roughly) in Arizona, where the Civil War took a leg, a drought has pushed him to the limits and into debt of bigger rancher Hollander. In the process of getting his cattle, he stumbles onto the Ben Wade (Crowe) gang, a group of 12 misfits, with Charlie Prince (Ben Foster, known to many as Russell, Claire's gay boyfriend on Six Feet Under) as his chief lieutenant. Evans wants no trouble, and Wade leaves him be.
In an entertaining play on the railroad men, Wade and his men head into town, where, due to his own hubris, Wade is caught, separated from his men. Evans sees his chance for a fresh start and offers to join the group taking Wade to Contention, AZ, where the stated 3:10 prison train to Yuma can take him to justice. The bunch includes the rich railroad man, the local doctor, the grizzled Pinkerton bounty hunter who has crossed paths with Wade before (played in limited fashion by Peter Fonda), Hollander's lackey who feeds on being a bully, and Evans. After a quick diversion to throw the gang off their tracks, they are on their way through Apache country and mountain passages to Contention, with Evans' oldest son, William, following behind, exercising his coming of age.
There are various moments of the film that show the expected sides of Evans and Wade. Wade flirts with the local saloon mistress, and then tries similarly with Evans' wife (Gretchen Mol in an almost-cameo appearance). Evans has his moments with his boys and his wife, as well as with Hollander. The group gets whittled down on its traverse to Contention (with a run in with the railroad crew with someone who looks uncannily like Luke Wilson, though not credited), with moments where it seems Wade is not all bad, and Evans is just a man wanting what he can for his family.
I had two main difficulties with the film. The first is the character of Wade. At the start, he seems like so much of your standard anti-hero; the bad guy you're supposed to like for being bad. As it progresses, he seems like even more, like the Big Evil of Dostoevsky's works, an evil that has no limits and no morality (see Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs). A killing of his own man, the flirting with Evans' wife, followed soon after with some handiwork on another character with a dinner fork, all lead this way. But, for the story to eventually work, he is brought back to earth, made perhaps not entirely evil, someone William can look up to in a Robin Hood sort of way. But the writers leave him in a limbo, which remains unappeasing through the end.
The other, and larger, issue I had was with timing. The Eastwood westerns, both by Leone as well as by him, all did a very good job of creating a rhythm, usually much like a cattle drive, with a slow and steady underlying pace, punctuated with critical and riveting action. Although there was certainly plenty of action, well-crafted even, there was little time to digest it, to come to terms with the interactions and their effects on our opinions of the actors. As with many Westerns, there is an inevitability to the film, though again, the final chase for the train is rushed, discombobulated, and beyond suspension of disbelief (for having a pegleg, the Evans character is a helluva runner).
There are other flaws, though less severe. The Fonda character is one-note, a waste of such a talent. Similarly, time is spent on side characters, such as the bar mistress and the gang members, where, in a film with an economy of time, perhaps this is not wise. There are certainly high points -- in particular, Bale creates another very well-rounded and enjoyable character that demonstrates his true talents -- but these cannot balance the whole.
The writers do share much of this blame, in my opinion. Of the 3 credited scriptwriters, one last wrote in 1976, mainly for TV, and the other 2 have Catch that Kid and 2 Fast 2 Furious as their track record. As so many before have shown, transitioning Elmore Leonard's works to the big screen can be glorious when done well, and unfortunate when not.
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