3:10 To Yuma: A Train Wreck of a Story

Ok X-Men fans remember Archangel? If not, remember the brother of the kidnapped boy in Alpha Dog? Actor Ben Foster is the most undervalued actor on the scene. He made this movie by himself. However, the only reason dude hasn't gotten any starring role is because frankly, he is not attractive at all. Personally, I don't like western movies, but I love Christian Bale so I chose to see it anyway.

Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his posse are outlaws who are in the middle of a robbery when Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and his two sons ride up in the middle of it. I understand that life sometimes have you and maybe even your children at the wrong place at the wrong time but this scenario made me mad from the beginning. Why would a father allow his sons to move CLOSER to a crime in progress?

The morale of this film is the outcome of bad parenting.

The outlaws hear Dan Evans and his sons but decide to spare there lives (although they didn't spare most of the bankers they robbed) and just take their horses so they would have to walk home. Ok, I can buy that killers usually wont kill children especially fathers in front of their children.

This is where the movie goes to hell.

Ben Wade decides to go into Dan's town to look for an old flame bartender and hook up to the point where he finds himself surrounded by deputies and the sheriff while his posse is off asleep. Ok I can buy that but then Dan Evans just happens to be there and since Ben has killed some deputies during the earlier robbery, the Sherriff asks Dan to assist him and a wounded Byron Elroy (Peter Fonda) who was shot during the robbery in taking Ben to the 3:10 train to Yuma to jail where he will be hanged for $200 bucks.

That is just like asking a high school graduate to move Billy the Kid to Rickers with no gun by donkey. It isn't going to be an easy commute.

Dan accepts this just because his family is financially strained and his oldest son William Even (Logan Lermen) thinks the worst of him for not being able to take care of his family.