We just got back from 3:10.
I kid you not, my wife, not a big western fan like I am, asked if we could stay and see it again. We decided not to because of the 90 minute wait.
--BUT, she confessed to me that if I had forced her to go to it one week ago on our 39th anniversary, she would not have been angry about it.
I, however, learned my lesson when I took her to "The Mountain Men" imdb.com on our anniversary in 1980, hence I made it to 39. She was not impressed with that movie even though it starred Charlton Heston and Brian Keith, and had some great knife fights and great mountain man scenes (my bread and butter).
Back to 3:10:
Our local freebie newspaper reviewed the movie, giving it a diamond and three thumbs up. Thumbs up means it's worth $9 to see, but my wife and I got senior tickets for only $6.50. They said it was a good allegorical tale about why we make the choices in life that we do. I found this to be an accurate take, and puzzled about many of the choices made by various characters, particularly Crowe's. My wife explained his character to me to my satisfaction, because clearly he was not the black bad guy I expected. I was more taken with the choices made by William and Fonda's character, the old bounty hunter.
Russell Crowe was outstanding, but I have to give the nod to Ben Foster. I'm not familiar with him, but he made us both HATE his character, always the mark of a good actor. Another actor that did the same for me was Tim Roth in Rob Roy imdb.com
Christian Bale, who played Dan Evans, did a great job of acting but I never quite warmed up to his character. He got around a little too good for a one-legged rancher.
My favorite character was the youngster, William, played by Logan Lerman. I like him because he made ready to shoot the men who torched his father's barn, thus accepting responsibility for his own existence which is something we should all do. I thought the young actor was very credible.
All in all the casting was great. I did not recognize Peter Fonda as the old bounty hunter until after I read IMDB. The other characters were all well cast too.
I'm disappointed that women played such a minor part. I would have been more impressed if Alice Evans, played by Gretchen Mol, had been allowed to object vociferously to Dan Evan's mission to catch the 3:10. I thought she pretty much rolled over on that, which to me is not realistic at all.
Other highlights:
-Screen Writing -- it's a rare movie where I can remember a line or two from the script. 3:10 had two such lines.
"What the Fword kinda doctor are you?"
"Well, it's nice to finally be able to have a conversation with my patient." (Pictures of swine fetuses on the wall hinting that the man is a veterinarian).
The other line was Crowe's "I should never have stopped to play poke her." After getting caught coming out of the hotel room with the bartender. I love puns, and it's a rare movie that has good ones.
-Costuming. Very realistic and period relevant. The old westerns were too much Roy Rogers and not enough real west. My favorite costume was that of Ben Foster's character, the form fitting buckskin suit that looked menacing on his lanky frame.
-Weapons. Clearly well researched, and included many cap and ball to cartridge conversions, which were ubiquitous at the time. Crowe had a tricked up Colt Peacemaker and several others had Colts. The run of the mill western of yesteryear is exclusively Colt and Winchester lever actions, which impressed me as a kid many years ago but is unrealistic in retrospect.
-Gun Fights. Very well done and realistic. Maybe a little too fast to see who was shooting whom.
--Makeup. Wound makeup was particularly good. You could see the scar on Crowe's cheek heal as the movie progressed.
--Set design. Well, OK, saloon bar where Crowe played his Poke Her was fancied up a bit, and the hotel room where they holed up for the last battle was a 'bridal suite' but most of the buildings and the ranch were pretty true to reality of the period. In other words, barely habitable and pretty much a quickly slapped together pile of rough lumber. And lots of tents.
--Sound Effects. Very realistic in the theater, with lots of plinks and plunks from bullet strikes.
Downsides:
I was not too impressed with the musical score. It certainly was not memorable on any scale that includes "The Magnificent Seven" and "Lonesome Dove."
Action shots went so fast it was hard to tell exactly what was happening. Realistic, I suppose, but it made me scratch my head a few times.
Bottom line: I may pay to see this again at least once in a theater and certainly will add it to my DVD collection in due time. I saw "Open Range" five or six times in a theater, which is something I almost never do. I loved it. 3:10 is very different, but almost as good.
We looked for the old Glenn Ford version at our local video store, but they didn't have it. |
