Lyzsi Sinclair3:10 to You Gotta be F%*king Kidding Me!
Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma
3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell 'The Phone Tosser' Crowe and Batman Bale, was touted as a return to good ol' drag-em-out, shoot-em-up, good guys versus bad guys westerns. Yee hah! I do love a good western, like Clint used to make. So I watched it. And I laughed.
First I laughed when Peter Fonda used dynamite to blow up a horse. OK, it was during a raid on a wagon full of money by the notorious Ben Wade (Crowe) and his gang, but it was still funny.
Then I laughed about a minute later, when, just after the raid had halted the wagon in a hail of bullets, a man inexplicably jumped up when everyone thought he was already dead. This was only ever going to lead to him becoming actually dead very quickly at the hands of Wade. These moments were just two of many that made Yuma one of the funniest (albeit unintentionally) movies I've seen this year.
Now, I haven't seen that many funny movies this year, so these incidents do not make the film worth watching. In fact, there is little in this film to recommend it at all. Christian Bale's portrayal of the down-on-his-luck rancher with a missing foot is probably the only thing this film has going for it.
Coming from me, that is a rather large statement - I have always thought Bale acted from his head, not his gut. The usual result, from American Psycho to The Machinist and yes, even the Batman movies, has always left me with the feeling that I am watching A Performance, rather than a guy being himself. But here, Bale has to play desperate, country and none too bright. And for the first time ever, I believed it.
Crowe, on the other hand, looks lazy. I could not tell if he was playing bored, or was actually bored. He certainly bored me. He was, however, saddled with a script and a director that kept consistently missing the mark. Not by much, but enough to make the result a long way off good.
* SPOILER ALERT!*
For instance, just after the opening sequence Wade, having just blown away a whole bunch of men in the pursuit of the aforementioned pay wagon, decides not to kill Fonda's character, the man who knows so much about him and has been chasing him for years. Why? Well, because that would be spoiling the fun! Or rather, because the writers couldn't think of a better way to keep the character alive until Wade kills him off later.
Then the bloke I mentioned earlier jumps up and grabs one of Wade's men. Wade shoots them both. Hm... OK, so you don't shoot the people who chase you, and hate you, but you do shoot the people you ride with even when you don't need to.
Then the gang rides into town where Wade tells the boys that their fellow who got shot did so because he made a stupid mistake. Having made his point, Wade decides to stick around to have a little horizontal folk dance with the barmaid, whereupon he gets caught by the sheriff of the town. Duh!
But he is not the only one afflicted with terminal idiocy. Having caught Wade, the law-keepers saddle up and ride him out of town, sending a decoy in the opposite direction. Smart! Yes!
But then, they decide that the incredibly dangerous killer will be fine if they simply chain his hands together and then leave sharp things lying around. Whoops, that wasn't such a smart thing to do - middle of the night, one guy gets done with a fork.
Well, surely now they've learned their lesson. Of course they have. So what do they do - they tell Wade he'd better not do it again! Clever!
But these criminal types, who would have thought they would be so untrustworthy. So, the next morning, there's Peter Fonda, just having a nonchalant ol' chat with Wade about how his mother was a whore and - BAM - Wade throws him off a cliff. Who'da thunk it?
By now, I was just agape at how dumb everyone in this movie really was, but there was more, oh, so much more, to come. Coincidence fell upon lazy writing, which fell upon impossible situations until I almost couldn't watch.
The final straw came when Wade, having been saved by his gang, decides to hang with his new buddy Batman because, well, he's just such a swell guy. He is in fact so swell that Wade is going to risk his life getting shot at by his own gang in order to help Bale's character get him on the titular train.
This character turnaround is so unlikely and so poorly handled that it is morbidly fascinating to watch such a spectacular failure. Then, just when you think every dumb-ass cliche has been wrung from this mess of a film, Bale goes down in yet another hail of bullets and Crowe gets so upset by this that he, wait for it... shoots his own gang (HAHAHAHA) and then GETS ON THE TRAIN AND LOCKS HIMSELF BEHIND BARS!!!!!!!!! Music swells, audience smirks, the end.
Surely somebody saw how dumb this film was before they made it? Surely...
