3:10 to Yuma

On the surface, this is exactly what you see in the poster and in the movie description. A man escorts a criminal to a prison train for sentencing, and encounters the criminal’s gang along the way. If that were all it was, it would still be a solid movie. It’s directed excellently, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale give amazing performances, and other than an occasionally wonky score, it’s a fine western through and through. But that’s not all it is. This is also a character piece about the value of a man’s soul, both to himself and to others. Bale’s Dan is a broken Civil War vet. His eldest son looks on him with disdain, and his wife can barely stand to look at him. His ranch is dying. His kids are going hungry, and one is sick. He feels every bit a failure as possible. When the opportunity comes to help escort Ben Wade (Crowe) to town to catch a train, he joins the posse. Wade is genial, chatty, intelligent, and ruthless, but not without a code of his own. As they travel together, the posse transporting Wade reveals their characters, and it is how Wade and Dan reflect on each other that provide the movie an emotional core. How they affect each other gives this movie great depth, with Wade bringing out in Dan a sense of pride and determination that had been buried, and Dan showing Wade the value of decency. That’s a gross oversimplification, but it’s hard to encapsulate everything without giving it all away. Suffice to say that, while they do not like each other, their effect on each other is precisely what the other needs, and Crowe and Bale communicate it with impeccable acting. Sometimes, it can be a touch slower, and the actor portraying Wade’s main henchman is a bit OTT. And I wasn’t fond of American Indians being stereotypical cannon fodder for a brief point. But it’s still a pretty good movie, and doesn’t deserve to be as forgotten as it seems to be.