John Wayne is crying with tears of joy because the Western is back!!! Screw the trite "wha-wha-wha's" and just let the six shooters do the singing. There hasn't been a Western this good since Tombstone and Unforgiven.
3:10 to Yuma is nothing but a masterpiece. A big enough movie for a gladiator (Russell Crowe) and a caped crusader (Christian Bale). It took Walk the Line director, James Mangold, five years to make this movie and it was worth the wait.
Yuma is unique to pretty much the entire western genre. It carries itself without the grandiose ballads, gigantic wide shots, and big romance. You first meet the criminal Ben Wade (Crowe) and his entourage, including his second hand man, Charlie (Ben Foster) who's even more messed up than Wade.
Wade is evil enough to lead a pack of wolves, but there is a soft side to him. He has a hidden passion to draw.
After finishing up a picture of a bird, Wade sets the stage when his crew smoothly robs a money-carrying stage coach, kills practically everyone, and heads towards the nearest small town for some victory shots and booty calls.
Bale plays Dan Evans, an out-of-money, down-on-his-luck rancher who has a burnt down barn and a bummed leg. After an early run-in with Wade and his posse, he finds the only survivor (Peter Fonda) from the robbery and brings him to the nearest town's doctor. The town is small. They only have a veterinarian.
Evans meets Wade again at a saloon and helps capture the bandit, but instead of murdering him right then and there eye-for-an-eye style, the townspeople decide to take Wade to the 3:10 train stop, where the train will take him to the gallows in Yuma.
Wade succumbs without any resistance and goes along for the ride. Handcuffed for the entire trip he nonchalantly gets to know the people who are taking him. Many of the people are annoying so he kills them, but he takes a liking to Evans. Wade sees a little of himself in Evans and thinks of him as the guy he would have turned into if he wasn't a bad guy. He considers Evan a gentle creature that can't hurt anyone and even has a drawing of him. He respects Evan and Evan respects him.
The final showdown gets nasty. It's long and not dragged on at all. I can't tell you what happens, but it's more than just a 1, 2, 3, draw. Wade's cronies come to rescue him and have the mind set to kill anyone that stands in their way. Wade knows this and can easily escape himself, but lets the journey drag on little bit more and makes sure that Evans sees him on the train. I can't say if Wade goes on the train or not, or if he survives or not, but it's a wild, wild ride.
It's a subtle aspect that can be easily missed with all of the bullets flying around, but the costumes are a character within themselves. Like how Paul Rudd in the movie Knocked Up ranted about how many different kinds of chairs there were in his Las Vegas suite, notice how many different cowboy hats there are.
Each different hat fits the cowboy.
Crowe's is black, slick, never get dirty, and he wears it is like Indiana Jones. The actors' wardrobe looks like it came out of a Details or Men's Vogue magazine. Take a look at Ben Foster's white jacket. It might appear to be dirty, but I could swear that Gucci put out one like it a few years back during the Tom Ford days.
Hey, what the heck, it's the new look for the modern Western.
I give 3:10 to Yuma: 5 out of 5 Roses.