The Cinema of the Four

3:10 to Yuma

The is a certain charisma to the criminal classes: Their freedom from society’s usual rules, their potential for tremendous financial gain in a brief amount of time, their ability to shoot people at will. Movies have never been slow to exploit this fact, enhancing the effect by putting even more charismatic actors in criminal roles. And no matter what one thinks of actor Russell Crowe’s roguish behaviour in the tabloids, casting him as outlaw Ben Wade in a remake of 1957’s “3:10 to Yuma” was about as fine a choice as the movie’s producers could make. And the only thing that could match that? Casting Christian Bale as Wade’s opposite number, rancher Dan Evans.

“3:10 to Yuma” is a traditional Western movie, end to end. But it’s a modern movie, with modern sensibilities as well. Ben Wade is a gunslinger, but more than that, he’s portrayed here as the most cold-blooded of killers, a serial killer with a gun, who doesn’t really need the gun. He’s brutal, evil, and as seductively charming as the devil himself. When fate gets him captured, he doesn’t even seem to mind very much. He’s a wolf surrounded by sheep, who knows they don’t have the teeth to hold him long.

On the opposite side of the fence is Dan Evans, a family man who has hit rock bottom. He’s poor, honest, and hard-working, but none of that seems to be getting him anywhere. And presented with a chance to make $200 by helping get Wade to the prison train, he takes it. He’s as unlovable as Wade is charming. But he’s our good guy, and he’s going to get the job done.

“3:10 to Yuma” is all about the contrast between those two men, the charming killer and the honest working man, and Russell Crow and Christian Bale make it well worth the watching. There are plenty of other fine actors that turn up along the way, and even though the ending, sad as it is, may be a little more optimistic than reality would usually have for us, that is what we go to movies for.

I would advise any client of mine to see this one. It is a very successful case indeed.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train!”