3:10 to Yuma

            This movie is ridiculous. It’s just lame, I’m sorry. The story follows Russell Crowe (Gladiator) as a famous and legendary gang leader who is finally cornered and busted after knocking over a group of pinkertons guarding a bank shipment. In order to transport him to Yuma in order to be prosecuted, the enlist local villagers to form a militia and guard the prisoner against the gang who was not captured. The principle volunteer is a man who as just defaulted on a loan and is about to lose his land (Christian Bale, The Dark Knight) who is desperate and realizes he must volunteer for this dangerous mission to collect the bounty and possibly redeem himself and his family.

            The only good performance of this movie is for the new leader of the gang, Charlie Prince (Ben Foster, Alpha Dog). Charlie is a lowdown, connicing asshole, and he’s just really really aggravating for the good guys.

            They hatch a plan, divert the gang and then head for the train to Yuma, Along the way they meet some weird people working on a railway, including one character played by Owen Wilson (Bottle Rocket). It really only serves to make one wonder, what is Owen Wilson doing in this movie.

            The problem I have with this movie, is not only is the plot totally unbelievable, totally incoherent. At one point, there is a decoy wagon with a fake prisoner, but they have still bound the fake prisoner, and locked him in the wagon, and not given him a gun, so if the gang should try to “rescue him”, he would be completely helpless and almost certainly be killed. Brilliant. There are many other miscues that are debilitating. The other issue I have with this movie is the pacing. It is a slow movie. And a western can’t really afford to be slow unless it’s really establishing characters, which this movie fails to do.

            It is just not carrying the audience anywhere. The ending doesn’t make any sense, and to be honest, I’ve met a lot of people that say they liked it, and when I asked them why, or brought up some of these things, they really sounded like they hadn’t watched it. Definite 1, but good to Riff. Also on a sidenote, There is a hilarious deleted scene. That’s a surprise.