When was the last time you saw a proper, old school western in the cinema? One that wasn’t revisionist or post-modern, told from the perspective of the Native Americans or Jesse James’s hat? Ever since Dances with Wolves it seems that to just make a film set in the old west with bad guys against good guys and plenty of shooting, fighting and cussing is a faux pas on a level with turning up at a dinner party in your dressing gown.
If that’s true then, with 3:10 to Yuma, James Mangold has performed the equivalent of arriving at said dinner party in his non-too-clean underwear, waving a bottle of whisky and singing Eskimo Nell. He hasn’t just made an old-fashioned western; he’s made a shamelessly old-fashioned western, with every cliché you could hope for and not an ounce of shame about it. There are stage-coach chases, ornery outlaws, brawls, gun-fights, fast draws, and even - astonishing in our age of political correctness - hostile Injuns.
And it’s all brilliant. After the somewhat pedestrian Walk the Line, Mangold has returned with an audacious piece of cinema, that’s anachronistic but at the same time curiously fresh and vital. There hasn’t been a better western since Unforgiven, and that wasn’t half so much fun.
The plot, as in the 1957 original, follows down at heel rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale), who - desperate for money and to earn back a little self-respect - becomes involved in escorting the sophisticated but psychotic outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a station where he can be put on the train to Yuma prison. Apart from Wade himself, the main complication to the plan is his gang, led by insane dandy Charlie Prince (Ben Foster). But there are plenty of others - as portrayed by Mangold, the old west is only slightly less hostile an environment than the surface of the sun, and much of 3:10 to Yuma’s entertainment quota comes from wondering what can possibly go wrong next for Evans and his posse.
Bale and Crowe are both excellent, and play off each other nicely - Bale is hangdog, stubborn and oddly dignified, developing his character with a degree of subtlety that makes his evolution from crippled rancher to gun-toting hero surprisingly plausible. Crowe, on the other hand, overacts like a madman, mixing urbane charm with unnerving violence, and obviously enjoying himself all the while. A nod should also go to Peter Fonda as the grizzled bounty hunter (because there had to be a grizzled bounty hunter), and to Foster, who - like most of the cast - manages to find just enough depth to enliven his fairly two dimensional character.
Just to be clear, saying that the characters are two-dimensional isn’t really a criticism here. 3:10 to Yuma is in most ways an exemplary piece of filmmaking, and it’s by no means dumb or shallow; but it’s definitely and unashamedly a genre western, made to a model that went out of fashion more than three decades ago. Ironically, though, what makes 3:10 to Yuma so good is what stops it from being a classic. It contains barely a hint of originality, satisfied instead to take existing tropes and polish them until they shine. A little bit of envelope-pushing might have made it something truly amazing. But then it might just have easily simply spoiled the fun, and deprived us all of a great bit of genre filmmaking.
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I’ve been looking forward to seeing this ever since I heard an interview with Fonda a couple of weeks ago. It sounded awesome then, and sounds awesome now; glad he wasn’t just talking out of his ass. 