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"3:10 To Yuma" shows how smart writing, solid direction, and excellent performances can elevate a genre picture to something way beyond the reach of most standard fare. Uncommonly absorbing for a mainstream film, "3:10 To Yuma" builds its story and characters with care and restraint, even giving room for subtext on the mythologizing of fathers, the nature of heroism, and the callous treatment of war veterans, all while delivering some slam-bang entertainment.

Christian Bale's Dan Evans is a rancher and veteran of the Civil War, now partially crippled having had part of his foot shot off. With a wife and two boys, one of whom is chronically ill, Evans struggles to farm the land, abandoned by his government and harrassed by the local landowner who is intent on selling Evans' land to the encroaching railroad. Evans' path crosses with that of outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), a warrior-poet who leads a gang of vicious thugs including psychopathic Charlie Prince (Ben Foster). When Wade is captured and has to be delivered to the 3:10 train to Yuma to face trial, Evans seizes the opportunity to earn some cash as part of the posse and to redeem the sense of himself as a hero both in his son's eyes and his own heart. The propulsive core of the story is Evans and the posse leading Wade to the train across hostile land, pursued by Wade's outlaw gang.

Interestingly, the film plays Evans and Wade against one another in a series of oppositions and comparisons. Evans is down-to-earth; Wade sketches pencil drawings of people and animals around him. Evans' son looks upon him with disdain; Wade's surrogate son Charlie Prince idolizes him. Evans is a downtrodden, struggling, fallen hero; Wade is the smooth, charismatic, successful outlaw. No cop-buddy picture in chaps, 3:10 To Yuma avoids the cliched route of two dissimilar characters coming to be friends, and continues to play them in opposition until a key turning point that unites them in a way that is believable and unexpected.

The layering of the characters adds welcome complexity and is delivered through two riveting lead performances by Bale and Crowe, and is enhanced by the reactions of two key supporting characters, Evans' son William (Logan Lerman) and Wade's second in command Charlie. William clearly despises his father, viewing him as a coward, while looking upon mythologized outlaw Wade with quiet awe. The arc of this character as respect for his father slowly seeds itself and grows deeper is a connecting thread to the film that anchors it just below the story's surface. Charlie, by contrast, worships Wade while remaining in the outlaw leader's shadow, lacking the humanistic soul, a point reinforced in a wonderful moment when Wade does that hoary stroll though the saloon doors and Prince quickly scuttles in behind him before the doors close on him.

We know that this movie is leading up to one mother of a gunfight, and we get it at the climax, but exciting as it is, it has greater impact because of the careful build up that comes before it. It's not one of the great shoot-outs a la Open Range, but it does bring the film to a satisfying edge-of-the-seat finale.

Director James Mangold and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael build the visuals with the expansive style of old epic Westerns, carefully framing the actors against spectacular landscapes. And the whole film successfully feels part of a genre while quietly pushing at the bounds of that genre.

Oh, and I would be remiss in not mentioning the wonderful character acting of Ben Foster, Firefly's Alan Tudyk, and screen legend Peter Fonda, adding spice in a memorable ensemble cast.

"3:10 To Yuma" is exactly what genre filmmaking should be, but so rarely is.

Learn more about this author, Paul Clarke.
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