Murder Most Merciful

3:10 TO YUMA (2007)

MURDER MOST MERCIFUL

When I was a kid, jumping around on my broomstick, with Roy Rogers cap pistols, a Gene Autry hat, and Hoppy’s vest, Westerns were more than plentiful, like 50% of all the television series, from the early kiddy versions from Gene, Roy, and William Boyd, the Cisco Kid, Annie Oakley, Range Rider, and the Lone Ranger and then transitioning to the :”adult” versions like GUNSMOKE, BONANZA, HAVE GUN-WILL TRAVEL, WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE, and literally dozens of others. In the 50’s and early 60’s movie theaters hummed with the baying of coyotes, the howling of savage Indians, and the deafening roar of a thousand--thousand six shooters. In the 60’s the creative Sergio Leone brought Clint Eastwood to Spain , fresh off RAWHIDE, and started a colossal revisionist trend, smearing spaghetti across the southwest, sparking off a wave of Euro-Westerns that seemed endless for a decade at least. In the 70’s Westerns became scarce and Cop shows ruled the air waves and the movie screens, and we are still in the grips of the backlash from that seed.

For over two decades I have been told, and have read that the Western is dead, that it is box office poison. But that did not stop Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, and Robert Duvall from cranking out several high quality Western epics for television, and some even for theaters –case in point THE STALKING MOON (1968), THE WILD BUNCH (1969), JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972), PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973), THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976), THE LONG RIDERS (1980), TOM HORN (1980), DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990), QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER (1990), UNFORGIVEN (1992), TOMBSTONE (1993), and OPEN RANGE (2003); and others, dozens of others that did not quite measure up.

In 1957 Director Delmer Daves, fresh from helming Glenn Ford in JUBAL (1956), and Richard Widmark in THE LAST WAGON (1956), gave us a minor B&W classic in his version of the Elmore Leonard short story 3:10 TO YUMA. It was a good, but flawed Western, with Glenn Ford doing a suave job playing a charming heavy (not his first), and Van Heflin giving us another shade of his downtrodden homesteader from SHANE (1953). It was filmed a bit under “A” status on a modest budget, mostly on the Columbia Ranch, suffered with an illogical “happy” ending, and was more a character study than it was an action shoot ‘em up.

In the spirit of Revision, director James Mangold ( COP LAND (1997), and WALK THE LINE (2005)) remade the 1957 film in a very 2007 style, with a heavy body count, gratuitous nudity, repeated scenes of bullish brutality, extra characters and more plot lines; pushing for a Sergio Leone look, feel, and sound. I think he might have been well served to pay more attention to Kevin Costner’s OPEN RANGE (2003), that managed to cast venerable Robert Duvall, both modernize yet revere the genre, and used more realistic sounding blanks in the pistols.

In many ways Mangold used the original film as a story board, even using a lot of the original dialogue. For film buffs they make terrific book ends, each with their own merit. I read where the original casting Mangold was trying for would have had Tom Cruise as outlaw Ben Wade and Eric Bama as rancher Dan Evans. Russell Crowe gave a very nuanced and confident performance as the outlaw leader, Wade, seething yet underplaying, always the con man, charming and charismatic –using the best qualities Glenn Ford found, with a dash of Richard Widmark, giving us a very “likeable” antagonist, part villain and part Samaritan, a cold-blooded killer with a twinkle in his eye, who smiled as he put a bullet between your eyes, who was also an artist, a poet, a lover, and a bit of a biblical scholar; a bit reminiscent of the excellent job done by Danny Huston in THE PROPOSITION (2005).

Christian Bale, an actor I admire, did not fare so well with his homesteader Evans. Heflin, in the original, gave us a proud dim-witted bohunk, a man so down on his luck that Ben Wade believed he could tempt him with cash; and almost did. Bale seemed a bit lost, hung up on his prosthetic metal leg, unwashed hair, and other ticks that never were quite integrated. He never conveyed real desperation; there was just some missing ingredient. He spoke his back story but did not believe it. Sadly we could see him “acting”. Spencer Tracy would have spanked him. Ben Foster as Charlie Prince was mercurial, the reincarnation of a young Lee Marvin, bizarre, lethal, almost albino in appearance, perhaps homosexual, a stone killer in skin tight leathers; brandishing his twin Colts like captured bolts of lightning. Richard Jaeckel was wound too tight, coming off as twitchy in the original. Foster reinvented the role and deserves kudos for it.

The comparisons march on, original to remake –Gretchen Mol was both underused and somewhat too attractive to play the windblown fatigued homesteader’s wife, Alice Evans. She and Bale just did not a couple make. Mol, who can be quite good, was not given much of a chance to get her beautiful teeth into meat. Leora Dana, in the original film, was more careworn and less attractive, more realistic, chapped lips and chapped calloused hands with sad weary eyes, worn out by watching her ranch die, and her husband struggling against nature and the neighbors. Heflin and Dana, the Evans family from 1957, were much more credible, more believable. Felicia Farr, who went onto to becoming Mrs. Jack Lemmon, was excellent as the original bar maid, Emmy –more than receptive, more than ready to receive the overtures from the brash and charming Ben Wade; attractive yet still lonely, and very vulnerable. When she held the stagecoach door for Wade, after he was captured, her emotions spilled over. Vinessa Shaw, the Emmy of the remake, seemed like a model slumming, remote, wooden, reserved, more a store mannequin than a delicious conquest, more a dalliance than the stuff dreams are made of.

A nice surprise in the new version was the young Logan Lerman as the eldest son, William Evans. He gave great depth to a character only sketched in to replace the misfit, the town drunk, Alex Potter, well played by Henry Jones in 1957. Lerman gave us frontier adolescent angst, mixed with a touching sentimentality. In the original film, Potter was captured by the Wade gang, and hung in the lobby of the hotel to incense Heflin, giving his life for the cause, to insure that Glenn Ford got on that 3:10 train. Of course another major character was killed in the remake for the same premise. In the new film, Dallas Roberts played Mr. Butterfield credibly, but he kept reminding me of John Ritter returned; seeming too young to own and run a successful stagecoach line. His character in most of the scenes just was totally bland, seeming to fade into the woodwork and wallpaper. In 1957 we had the plump character actor Richard Emhardt as Butterfield, pompous, wealthy and successful, not brave and not pretending to be, an authority figure actually old enough to have put together a stage line.

Mangold gave us several new characters and lots of new plot twists to spice up the remake. He added the despised bullying Pinkerton agency into the mix, hired by Butterfield to protect cash boxes, both working for ruthless railroad barons, along with scenes of abused Chinese workers tunneling through mountains to make way for the iron horse. He made up the character of wealthy rancher Hollander, played by Lennie Loften, who wanted the Evans ranch for railroad right-of-way, and had burned their barn to make his point. He put the Bisbee Marshal in bed with the railroad, and Hollander, and the Pinkertons. In the original, Ford Rainey was all alone struggling to get up a posse. He gave us talented Brit Alan Tudyk ( FIREFLY, and DEATH AT A FUNERAL (2007)), playing the town sawbones, Doc Potter, who also happened to be a veterinarian. Then was Peter Fonda playing tough-as-nails bounty hunter and Pinkerton agent Byron McElroy, a man known to and despised by Ben Wade.

There were several inconsistencies in the film that nagged at me. Why would the Doc have joined the posse? Why didn’t McElroy die from being gut shot by Charlie Prince, or die from the butchery of the medicine practiced by Potter? No one seemed to care much after Wade beat him up and literally tossed him off a cliff for making a crass comment about the outlaw’s mother. My wife was bothered by that. She liked the character and felt he deserved a better demise. On the way to Contention, when the posse sat around a campfire, and suddenly they were ambushed by angry, possibly drunken Apaches, why were the Indians such terrible shots, and we did they bunch up together the easier for Ben Wade to sneak up on them and kill all three? At that point, Russell Crowe as Wade had three pistols, three rifles, and three Indian ponies. So being the crafty and fearsome outlaw, why did he march back into camp, give up the weapons and horses, and put himself back into custody; especially immediately after killing one of the stupid deputies with a fork? When Ben Foster as brash young Charlie Prince yelled, “Listen up!” to his gang, the dialogue fell flat as the modern vernacular wormed its way into the past. I had to smile. It was like that moment in THE MASTER GUNFIGHTER (1975), when samurai gunfighter Tom Laughlin asked another character, “Are you putting me on?”

In both films there was a twist ending, illogical in the original film, and just preposterous in the new one, compounding and deepening the illogic to a painful and frustrating level.
In the remake, there lies Dan Evans shot to pieces by Charlie Prince, watching Ben Wade execute first Prince and then the five other members of his gang in the blink of an eye, fanning his pistol in fine Clint Eastwood fashion. Only then Wade calmly put himself into custody on the train to please the dying Dan Evans, because after all he had escaped from Yuma Prison twice before. As the train steamed out he whistled for his trusty steed, and we are to believe that perhaps he has another plan. In the 1957 version, Wade and Evans made it onto the train, and Evans shot Charlie Prince as he ran alongside. That scene corrupted the movie, capping the action with illogic and falseness; that and the obligatory and irritating wave rancher Dan gave to his wife as the train passed her wagon, and Frankie Laine began to warble the theme song over the closing credits.


Still I must say that this remade 3:10 is very watch able, full of interesting acting, some touching scenes, and three times the action of the old film. So film buffs and Western lovers flock to this muscular movie, a stylish anomaly, an earnest and vigorous remake of a flawed original. Just be aware that as it fades out, and Wades’ horse is trotting alongside rider less, it feels more like we have just watched Leonardo Di Caprio and Sharon Stone in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (1995), which included by the way an odd performance by the mostly unknown Russell Crowe. I found myself pining away for the presence of Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, or Sam Elliott. Westerns are not dead-- they are just messed around with.

Glenn Buttkus 2007