Early Review of 3:10 To Yuma: Weak Ending Prevents Film from Being Great

3:10 To Yuma, opening Friday September 7th, is a strong Western that deserves mention on the very short list of terrific Westerns made since 1980. It belongs right up there with The Long Riders, Silverado, Unforgiven, Open Range and Tombstone. The genre has long been considered dead after John Wayne died and Clint Eastwood moved on to other genres but one seems to pop up every so often. But yet people stay away for the most part. Of those listed above only Unforgiven was a true hit (helped by its Oscar for Best Picture) while the others failed to find an audience though Tombstone got a second life on video. Maybe this film can revive the genre which deserves a chance if films like this can be produced. Had the film not got mired down in an ending where a key character goes against everything his character has shown us for two hours, it would have been rightfully compared to Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar winning masterpiece. It's still a very strong film.

The film, based on a short story by a then upcoming writer named Elmore Leonard is a remake of a mildly popular 1950's film that starred Van Heflin and Glenn Ford. That version is unseen by me so I went in to this film completely unaware of its story. It opens with Christian Bale, who along with his other current release Rescue Dawn is proving quite adept at playing the everyman brought down by the circumstances of life but fights to percervere, plays Dan Evans, a rancher who lost a leg in the Civil War but gets around with a prostesis. He is having hard times thanks to a land owner eager to evict him so the land in which Evans lives can be sold at a higher price to make way for a new railroad. He is good man and a good husband and father to two sons, one an eager teenager and the other a young son with tuberculosis. One night the landlord sends some of his men to burn down Dan's barn promising the house will go next. Dan and his older son rescue the horses and cattle but not before most of them run off. The next morning he sets out to find the missing cattle with his two sons and soon they become witnesses to a stagecoach robbery.