3:10 to Yuma

It's been a few weeks since I've seen this film but I gotta say I'm still feeling the impact and thus I had to blog it out. I can say now, even just three weeks into Fall Movie Season, if you see anything at all in the coming months make sure you check out 3:10 to Yuma. Not a fan of Westerns? Who fucking cares. It's brilliant and the performances are unparalleled.



I think my favorite part about this film is the supporting roles. And trust me, I LURVE Christian Bale and Russell Crowe so to say that means a great deal. We have Dallas Roberts, a favorite of mine since A Home at the End of the World, who plays a calm, cool, and relatively collected railroad rep. His job is to simply personify the unforgiving nature of the railroad business but he does it so vividly and convincingly that I found his character to be one of the best in the film.

Alan Tudyk, known primarily for his work in the fantastic but unseen sci-fi series Firefly, is once again great as Doc Potter, an unassuming yet witty veterinarian who is roped into (no pun intended) joining the posse of men escorting Crowe's Ben Wade to the prison train.



I really enjoyed Peter Fonda's performance in this film I think because he's barely recognizable as Peter Fonda. Maybe it's just my strange taste but I've never taken to Peter Fonda in anything he's done which is odd considering I absolutely adore his father in everything! In 3:10 to Yuma, Fonda breathes grizzled life into Byron McElroy, a bounty hunter intent on killing Ben Wade to gain a reward before the government can kill him themselves.



But all in all, I have to say the Best Supporting Actor award goes to Ben Foster. Speaking of unrecognizable, it took me several scenes to piece together that this was, in fact, the same guy who played the naive Jewish teenager Ben Kurtzman in Liberty Heights. Unbelievable. This is undeniably Ben's best work as he completely inhabits what could have been a caricature of role with brutal cynicism and unrelenting cruelty. He honestly makes Russell Crowe's "bad guy" look a bit like Jimmy Stewart and Russell Crowe's "bad guy" is freakin' bad as hell.



So on top of all the amazing performances, 3:10 to Yuma has got a solid script (thank you AGAIN Elmore Leonard!), some eye-popping cinematography, and an absolutely beautiful score. It's been a really long time since I've come out of a movie so jacked up and eager to tell every one and their mother about what I'd just seen and this film did that and then some. Between 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James which comes out this weekend, I am so excited to say that the Western is officially back in business. So get your ass to the theater and start soaking it up.

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To get even more fantastic insights into the subtle greatness of 3:10 to Yuma, check out this review from the incomparable Roger Ebert.

"One test of a great actor is the ability to let dialogue do its work invisibly..."