Movie Review – 3:10 to Yuma

Where actors overtake ambience

‘3:10 to Yuma’ is a classic example of how important actors are. Generally in a western film, the locales, music and dust take over the entire setting. So filmmakers don’t even prefer proper actors and even if they do they’d not be given any scope to emote. They’d be a point of interest in the story we could relate to, but not really humans. ‘3:10 to Yuma’ breaks the template and gives actors rich importance. Or maybe the actors were so great that they took over the onus set by the director. The end product due to that is a highly refined emotive intelligent piece of work with which we could empathize.

Every time a Christian Bale movie starts, it makes me feel why is he rated so highly but he himself answers the question by the end of the movie. Especially with this movie, it was more challenging because Russell Crowe is one of my favorite actors. But even with him around, Christian Bale overtakes him in the end. The whole movie had an interesting conflict between them. Not only as characters but as actors too. It felt like subconsciously they were in awe of each other’s acting and fighting their inner demons to go past them. It was a beautiful feeling if you could understand that.

Dan Evans (Christian Bale) was not really a hero but in constant pursuit of being one. In the very first scene we get to know that he has lost a leg. Despite the fact, he was ready to fight a ruthless leader of a gang of outlaws Ben Wade (Russell Crowe). We know that Dan doesn’t have an iota of chance against him. But he goes for a fight against him not only to be a hero in front of his family, his son to be precise, but to redeem himself. May be deep within he knew it was a suicidal attempt or maybe he really thought he could do it but he reminded me of Jaime Lannister after losing his hand. May be Dan too would have been heroic like him before losing his leg.

Thanks to have watched ‘Asuran’, the opening scenes reminded of that and I thought, at some point Dan Evans would come out heroic and kill all the goons. Only then his annoying son, William Evans (Logan Lerman) would know his value. But ‘3:10 to Yuma’ shows why it’s a greater film than ‘Asuran’ and stands the test of time by not making Dan heroic at any instant. In fact Christian Bale needs to be appreciated to have taken such a deeply unheroic role.

Ben Wade on the other hand was an effortlessly ruthless villain. He spits venom just by mere look. The role was in fact a reversal of sorts because generally Russell Crowe would always be a good guy and good guy phenomena suits him to tee, just like he did in ‘Gladiator’ and even so brilliantly in ‘Cinderella Man’.

The arc of Ben wade was really interesting. For some reason he has that admiration for Dan Evans. May be because he had a life that Ben Wade doesn’t and that’s what led him to this or maybe he just liked the gut of that man, a true straightforward person who was ready to fight him but he also knew that he didn’t have any chance. The bromance between the both was brilliant. This type of bromance wouldn’t have been special even if they both had been on the same side, because it would have been one-dimensional and Sholayish. They being opposites and still admiring each other was something special.

Even though, from the time Ben Wade gets captured, you’d be at the edge of the seat. It’s only when Dan tells him why he wants the win more than the money, was where one would truly break up. Post that Dan helps him of course and I liked the fact that the train which was supposed to arrive at 3:10 as per the title doesn’t arrive on time. It was a nice pun. But what I didn’t like was Ben killing his aids. Of course he wanted Dan to succeed and he had plans to escape but may be the killing gave a sense of forceful completion to his character. May be as he had killed his entire group, he’d escape and be a good guy going forward.

Generally in westerns, it would be okay to bask in the feel of the movie unless there would be no crowd, like the desert, Ben’s house etc. but when they come to a town, it feels artificial to just see such less people around. We don’t really get a feel that it’s a world of the past. It’s something I wish filmmakers negate in the future.