Wow… hold your horses, folks… my first review of a Western!
Okay, normally I don’t like Westerns because I find them terribly predictable. Everything is very straight-forward, good guys in white hats fighting either outlaws or Indians. The white hats will win, unless it is actually based on a true story and Hollywood didn’t think they could get away with a rainbow ending at the Alamo… and even then there’s usually a scene with some redskins eating kittens, killing pregnant women, or something along those lines.
However, I had a few spare hours and it was available for viewing, so I figured the worst that could happen was that I’d fall asleep.
I actually liked it.
Mind you, I haven’t seen that many Christian Bale flicks, but those I have seen tell me that he was in the same acting class as Kevin Costner and Keanu Reeves… meaning that he’s blank unless he’s in the role of a psychopath where non-expressiveness is expected. This film further strengthened this theory of mine.
But Crowe’s character made up for all of that in scores. I love it when the villains have a lot of charm, cleverness, personality, and make no apology for being bad. This character would be akin to the devil in a cowboy hat. His main sidekick was pretty damned impressive too.
The story itself is pretty simple and no-frills, but there is a lot of action and the characters are a little more complex than I’m used to seeing in the genre.
I thought they were going all sappy with the ending, but then one little gesture turned it from a cliché ending to one leaving hope someone would in fact soon be riding into the sunset.
Film information: 3:10 to Yuma
Original Film:
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