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| The
good bad man: (l-r) Crowe and Fonda in 3:10 to Yuma. |
The
Western Reborn
By
Laura Leon
3:10
to Yuma
Directed
by James Mangold
One thing’s for certain: Director James Mangold has a jones
for the great westerns of yesteryear. How else to explain
the precision with which he recaptures familiar sounds like
the jingling hardware of racing horses, the jangle of their
riders’ spurs and buckles, the iron screech of a slowing train,
the foreboding hollowness of worn boots on wooden sidewalks?
Who else could have re-created so perfectly the concomitant
terror and cool factor of a six-shooter, or the man handling
it? If anything, however, Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma, a
retelling of the classic 1950s Delmer Daves movie (based on
an Elmore Leonard story), does more than pay homage to a genre.
It breathes new life in it, bringing it up to date with our
faster-paced expectations while still retaining the patina
of tradition, stock characters and legend. Like its predecessor,
and yet for entirely new reasons, this 3:10 deserves
to be in the pantheon of great westerns.
Outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) has just robbed his 21st stagecoach
when we first encounter him, but rather than brandishing a
pistol, he’s quietly sketching a desert bird, immediately
establishing the first of many dichotomies of his personality.
While his gang, which includes the dashing and dastardly Charlie
Prince (a scene- stealing Ben Foster), is going after stagecoach
no. 22, they come across a downtrodden rancher, Dan Evans
(Christian Bale), out collecting the cattle that a hard-driving
landowner has scattered in a bullying attempt to drive the
Evanses off potentially valuable railroad property. Dan’s
older son Will (Logan Lerman) is clearly impressed by Wade’s
ruthlessness, as it’s so in contrast to his father’s dour
impotence. Wade spares the Evans men, who end up taking wounded
bounty hunter Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda) back to town. While
there, Wade gets arrested, and Dan, hard up for money to pay
his creditors, leaps at the chance to earn $200 as part of
the party entrusted to get the killer all the way to the town
of Contention in order to make the 3:10 train to Yuma for
trial.
While keeping the pace pumping (again, perhaps a necessary
nod to today’s fidgety audiences), Mangold never loses sight
of the essential conflict, which is the psychological chess
game going on between Ben and Dan. Throughout the movie, Ben
offers Dan the chance for freedom, safety and a tidy sum besides,
but even as the ever-increasing specter of death looms over
him, Dan refuses. There are times when Ben seems downright
likeable, and his reasoning, particularly with respect to
the inherent similarity between what he does and McElroy’s
job, contains disturbing truths. Crowe inhabits this role
with such gusto and soul that it’s the first time I’ve seen
him in years when I have been able to forget L.A. Confidential’s
Bud White.
The grim counterpoint to this dandy gunslinger is Bale’s Dan,
whom we first encounter stumbling on his one foot out of his
house in a vain pursuit against the men who are burning down
his barn. Unable to get a shot off, or to retrieve valuable
feed, he lays in the dirt while his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol)
and Will look on in futility and disgust. When Alice attempts
to turn Dan off to the idea of helping bring Wade to the train,
reassuring him that nobody will think the less of him, he
counters coldly by saying, “Nobody can think less of me.”
As the movie progresses, Dan becomes less a victim than a
complex repository of reason, determination and ability. Mirroring
the ever-shifting power paradigm between killer and guard
is Will, whose blanket admiration of the killer evolves into
something much more disturbing, a mix of like and contempt,
as he gains new insights into the father he once accused of
cowardice and ineptitude. Young Lerman is a real find in a
role that has been greatly enhanced from the Daves original,
and it helps that his face retains some little-boy youthfulness,
an oddly jarring yet believable counterpoint to his adolescent
surliness. Also memorable is Foster, who imbues his psycho
killer Prince with the same underlying homeoerotic tendencies
that have sparked such classics as Red River. The mere
sight of this character, cocksure in his double-breasted leather
jacket, is as graceful as it is menacing.
An ongoing theme throughout 3:10 is the seesawing concept
of good and evil and how it relates to money. The railroad
man is always paying people to do work, which may include
killing, that will ensure the success of the railroad. The
bounty hunter is paid to bring people in. Dan was paid $200
by the government not, as he explains, for the loss of his
leg, but to allow the government to walk away. Dan himself,
early in the movie, accepts Ben’s compensation for his time,
but refuses to take his bribes. At one point, Charlie Prince
offers willing parties $200 each to blow away anybody involved
with getting Ben on the train.
The movie’s grand finale is a wild rollercoaster, but again,
Mangold and his stars never lose sight of the human element,
despite all the shattering wood and exploding barrels. As
the two antagonists make potentially life-ending decisions,
the meanings of life, character, heroism, morality and justice
are reexamined. A stunning last act, which as a fellow reviewer
observed could only have been played so aptly by Crowe, shatters
all of those preconceptions, leaving us to pick up the remaining
pieces and re-sort them into what we now know of the universe.
3:10 to Yuma is rooted equally in the hard facts of
our country’s development and the mythic legends of that history,
and its ability to evoke such disparate realities is nothing
short of brilliant.
Guns
’n Babies
Shoot
’Em Up
Directed
by Michael Davis
A gleefully malicious crime drama with a taste for depravity
probably acquired from Sin City, Shoot ’Em Up
is turbocharged by the cinematography of Peter Pau, who won
an Oscar for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
But don’t expect any ephemeral wirework; for writer-director
Michael Davis’ lewd-and-crude screenplay, Pau’s action choreography
is more similar to that of his Hong Kong brethren, John Woo—only
slicker. Which is in keeping with the dialogue: Davis has
a snide wisecrack or silly zinger for every rollover in the
barreling plot.
The opening sequence is a jaw-dropper, and it doesn’t slow
down from there. A lone man on a bench, known only as Mr.
Smith (Clive Owen), reluctantly helps a pregnant woman who
is attacked by a thug. Knocked down in an alley, the woman
pulls a gun and kills her attacker, inducing labor. Smith
assists in her baby’s birth while holding off—with spectacular
brio—an onslaught of gunmen. By the end of this absurdly extended
yet rapid-fire shootout, Smith and the baby are on the run
from a phalanx of hit men in the employ of a nefarious Mr.
Hertz (Paul Giamatti), who has mysterious connections beyond
the criminal underworld. In desperate need of a wet nurse,
Smith forcibly recruits a prostitute from his past (Monica
Bellucci), who bonds with the baby. Her first maternal instinct
is to perform a blowjob for money to buy a bulletproof vest
to use as a baby blanket.
Though the action is lowdown and dirty, it’s also funny; some
of the most amusing visuals come from Smith’s gymnastic coddling
of the baby while engaged in ludicrous martial artistry to
fend off a nonstop barrage of gangsters (“I’m a British nanny
and I’m dangerous,” he taunts one attacker). The plot eventually
reveals Smith’s and Hertz’s respective special training, and
why Hertz wants the baby at any cost, but the X Files-style
narrative is incidental to the high- voltage choreography,
soundtracking, and art direction. Owen is magnetic as usual,
and the ever-versatile Giamatti is convincing as a disgusting
dirtbag.
The double dealings and strings of corruption go on for too
long, as they tend to do in these post-Kill Bill movies,
but Shoot ’Em Up is true to its title, providing a
rush of cinematic excitement on a par with huffing super-premium
gasoline.
—Ann
Morrow
Cecil B. Demented
The
Ten
Directed
by David Wain
While the sketches featured in director-writer David Wain
and writer Ken Marino’s The Ten do, as advertised,
correspond with the Judeo-Christian lord’s commandments, moviegoers
can be assured that they are in no danger of gleaning the
slightest theological insight from the picture. In fact, audience
members who ascribe to Judeo-Christian beliefs might be led
astray. They may get a few chuckles, however.
Paul Rudd is host Jeff Reigert. He introduces each segment
while taking part in a running gag about his angry wife (Famke
Janssen) and his frisky younger mistress (Jessica Alba). One
would be forgiven for thinking that the entire reason Rudd
took the part is the chance to make out with Janssen and Alba,
but he—and they—are quite funny. (Best Alba line: “I want
a pony!”)
Some of the episodes are quite funny. Some fall absolutely
flat. Others are just mildly amusing, memorable only for some
great performances by the likes of Liev Schreiber, Kerri Kenney-Silver
(Reno: 911) and Oliver Platt. It all depends on how
one feels about the degree of humor inherent in botched surgery,
prison rape and naked straight men dancing to the smooth soul
sounds of Roberta Flack.
I enjoyed the bit about the idiot (Adam Brody) who jumps from
a plane sans parachute and ends up permanently embedded in
the ground—much to the chagrin of his fiancée (a wonderful
Winona Ryder), who, in an equally entertaining subsequent
episode, becomes sexually obsessed with a ventriloquist’s
dummy. And Justin Theroux is hilarious as Jesus H. Christ,
a Mexican handyman and the son of God, who has a torrid
affair with a virginal librarian (Gretchen Mol).
But that’s it: I really liked just three of The Ten’s
stories. Pretty good for a batting average, not so much for
a screen comedy. I’m pretty sure that the Lord would not approve.
—Shawn
Stone
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