Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-01-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Never let it be said that the Western is dead. Because every time its last rites are read, another filmmaker moves in and produces another fine entry to an enduring genre that’ll simply never go away. In this case, the film is 3:10 To Yuma, and the filmmaker is James Mangold, straight off his Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic, Walk The Line.

3:10 To Yuma is, however, a far different beast, bringing together two of the most magnetic male leads in modern day cinema. On the one hand, there’s Christian Bale as the law-enforcing Sheriff, and he’s facing off against Russell Crowe’s killer. Unsurprisingly, it’s the conflict and sparks between these two that ignite the film, and turn it into a film well worth seeking out.

For what director Mangold realises is that the trick with 3:10 To Yuma (named after the prison train that Bale’s character seeks to put Crowe’s on) is to give his two stars room to work, and injecting plenty of action and excitement into the mix. The end result, while not a top-notch Western, turns out to be a real cut above most of the current multiplex fodder. Even if Westerns aren’t usually your thing, it’s well worth giving this one a try. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
James Mangold (WALK THE LINE) directs this remake of the classic Western film. Christian Bale stars as a sheriff who vows to bring a killer (Academy Award winner Russell Crowe) to justice, but it won't be easy to put the criminal on the train to Yuma.

Customer Reviews

The 19th century credit crunch
Talk about mixing a good-old-fashioned Western with modern-day lifestyles - here's a cowboy in 1880s Arizona with debt problems, mortgage arrears and who might lose his ranch as a result! Maybe the credit crunch isn't such news after all. But instead of repossession, in those days the lenders tended to set fire to your property, so hopefully we have progressed a little.

This is an attractively-shot movie with a really good musical score and a couple of A-listers in Bale and Crowe, all of which combines to make for good if sometimes rather violent visual and aural entertainment. It starts off reasonably enough, with financially-stressed Evans (Bale) agreeing to help put captured villian Wade (Crowe) on a train - that's the 3:10 to Yuma - to make sure he goes to prison. But things get a bit confusing after a while, because it's a fair certainty that Wade will be hanged as soon as he gets to Yuma and while he makes a few expected attempts to free himself from his captors during the long horseback-ride to the station, he ultimately gets what could be described as an attack of morality and ends up with somewhat conflicting feelings for Evans in the seemingly impossible quest. It's pacey and full of action but all of this serves to put a mask on the underlying point of the film in the first place. Character development is good but there are more point-blank killings than I feel there need have been given the character-driven original (made 50 years earlier) on which it is based. As a result it shouldn't be taken too seriously as a story because in the end it fails to convince, but as a visual spectacle it's worth watching and the soundtrack helped to lift it a couple of additional notches too. A better approach would have been to tone down the violence and instead focus on the character of Wade and explain in more detail why he made the decisions he did towards the finale. That's probably what the 1957 film of the same title did, I suppose, so for the 21st century they've removed half of the interesting bits and replaced them with as many shoot-outs as they could fit in. A pity, because they could have made a great film if they had, as opposed to a merely good one.

3.10 to Yuma.
I agree with the criticisms of the one and two star reviewers here. An intriguing premise soon evaporated as the plot veered wherever it felt like going without even a passing nod to reality. When a character recovers from a point-blank stomach wound to fighting fitness within a matter of hours you know what to expect. However, once all critical faculties have been completely suspended the film is quite entertaining. Characters survive bone-crunching, brain-pulverising beatings in cartoon style - even Homer Simpson would struggle in this company of indestructibles. Some characters die instantaneously, picked off with miraculous accuracy from distance, while others keep going despite injuries that would be fatal to any mere mortal and dodge hails of bullets as if protected by an invisible shield.

The moral, if there is one, that some `bad' guys might not be any worse (and are certainly more honest) than the supposed `good' guys is rammed home with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. The film looks good and there is never a dull moment. Russell Crowe is particularly likeable as an irredeemably wicked, smiling Satan cowboy.

There you have it. Utter nonsense, but I enjoyed it. Please don't take it seriously.

Better than the original
I have also recently watched the original version, with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. It still holds up well, albeit in Black and White, but was not a patch on this latest production, with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Somebody said it was the best western since 'Unforgiven'. Well, I'm not sure I would rate it quite that highly, but it is definitely worth seeing, nevertheless.