Well, I seem to have accidentally started the fall movie season early around here. I went to see this a few weeks ago because it's a Western, it sounded like maybe it wouldn't suck, but even if it did I figured at least I'd get to enjoy horsies, lovely landscapes and manly men running around with guns for a couple of hours, ending the season with a bang.
Having never encountered the source material, I've no opinion as to whether or not this adaptation does justice. How, you wonder, can a fan of Westerns not have encountered the first film? Simple! Despite claims that the 50s were the height of the filmed Western, turns out most of those movies and tv shows suck, actually. In My Opinion. <cackle>
For the most part, there were only three major flaws in the 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma.
First: I don't care if you are Peter Fonda. NOBODY bounces back from a gut wound like that.
Second: That time period, those character types? "Negro" is not the word that would have been used. And when "negro" is used in THE VERY SAME BREATH as "coolie," one has to assume nobody had their thinking caps on when that segment was written, rewritten, filmed and edited. That word choice is an example of the writing team and the director Missing The Forest For The Hysteria.
For the record, "coolie" is akin to "nigger" in that it is a slur used specifically against a particular ethnic group, in this case Asians. I am starting from the position that it is not possible to believe that the folks who put this movie together were unaware of this. When a creator is so jumpy over outside so-called politically correct forces to be afraid to allow a character to say (appropriately) "nigger" when another character is allowed to say (appropriately) "coolie" nanoseconds later, really all you're demonstrating is that you're 1: a wuss and 2: still don't quite Get It.
I can imagine the argument being made that the negro/nigger switch being a sign that the creators were Aware of Larger Issues. But I wouldn't buy it. There is a difference between awareness/sensitivity and creative capitulation. There are only two people in that movie you can extrapolate from what they showed us about them whom you can accept the idea that "negro" *is* the word they would use in everyday conversation. Neither of them are in the scene I'm talking about.
Should I mention that that sequence, which was brief, was also funny? Or would that be wrong?
I also wonder if my API brethren not having the reputation of screaming from the mountaintops as my people do played into it all somehow. (Please note my use of the the term REPUTATION. I did not say "reality," I did not say "fact," I said REPUTATION.) Maybe the filmmakers tripped up on "nigger," and made the wrong decision, because they know we yell bloody murder. Focused on X (negro/nigger), they didn't notice how their whole Sensitive New Age Okay Guy thing is made invalid by the use of Y (coolie).
Third: Technically this has little to do with the movie itself, as it's about marketing, but the poster above is the one that should have been released widely. It is so very much better than the one you've probably seen plastered all over bus stops and billboards. I *think* this is the European poster, but I'm not sure. It could be an early test poster. Though it's a little text heavy, it is evocative, dramatic, tells a story in a glimpse and is just plain cool. It probably wasn't chosen as a wide-release poster because the guy featured is not either one of the stars. Also, as far as the plot goes, neither of the two star characters could have been dropped in in place of the guy featured because they were elsewhere and it wouldn't have made sense.
(Yes, I am as obsessed about bad movie posters as I am about bad book covers. Everybody needs a hobby.)
Anywho, everyone in this movie was very good, but the guy in the poster up above was FANTASTIC, and not just because of that outstanding jacket. Maybe 10 percent of his fabulousness was due to the costume...the rest of it was his performance. He does a whole bunch of things throughout the film that zing, but what he does during the final chase through town, as he realizes something's wrong, will quite possibly break your heart. It's not one big thing, but an accumulation of small actions. The only performance I can compare it to at this moment of typing is the power of what Hugo Weaving did when, as Elrond, he hands over Arwen to Aragon for her wedding in the final installment of that franchise. If you somehow missed that the first time around, pop in the dvd, fast forward to that scene and when Elrond & Arwen show up for the wedding, watch only Elrond. What I'm talking about lasts only three seconds, maybe? What he does will wipe you out, and if you are a father of a daughter, it might slay you. Tiny thing, but that blip could have easily replaced all of that chatter between Elrond & Arwen (and Elrond & Aragon in the other films) without losing an ounce of what they were trying to communicate. I caught it the first time around because whenever Weaving's on the screen he tends to be the only thing I'm paying attention to.
Meanwhile, the back of that awesome 3:10 jacket can be seen above, in the version of the poster the marketing people should have released widely but did not. There's a female version of that jacket in Deadwood season #2, worn by the evil madam. Hers is more asymetrical, though. If I can find a pattern for his, I would make one for myself. I have Fredi, who can sew through four layers of leather as if they were butter! I'd need a pattern because just looking at it I can tell it would test the boundaries of my self-taught skills. Happily, because that jacket is obviously riffing off of Confederate officer coats, I can think of a few sources where a pattern might be found.
Anywho, it looks like I have one more western to add to the List of 10, though part of me wonders if it's kosher to do so without James being around to discuss/argue about it. One of our projects was to come up with 10 solid Westerns we could universally recc to folks with no reservations, qualifications or explainers. Adding 3:10 list would bring it up to 5.*** Five more to go. It's only taken us 10 years so far. That's in part because so few westerns come out anymore and when they do, most of them fall somewhere between suck and pedestrian.
As far as a general sense of the quality of this summer's movie season? I can't call it. A third of all of the movies I saw this summer was just the one movie - oo! countdown to dvd! ... and for the record I still have one more entry to write about that movie - while a quarter was that other movie. Thus, I didn't see enough of the summer offerings to get a sense of the big picture.
It looks like I'm back. I'm not. Explainer of just how much I'm not back tomorrow.
*** In no particular order: The Proposition, Unforgiven, Deadwood (the HBO television series, taken as a whole work), and Little Big Man are the other four. Provisionally, The Seven Samurai is on the reserve list, but for obvious reasons it's not allowed to count.
