Sunday, January 27, 2008

3:10 To Yuma - A Very Disappointing Movie

IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MOVIE, AND DO NOT WANT IT RUINED FOR YOU, THEN DON'T READ THIS.

Last night my son rented 3:10 To Yuma. It was a movie I had recommended that he watch. A movie as I remembered that was about good versus bad, morality versus immorality, doing right versus doing wrong; and the guy who winds up being the good guy was indifferent at first, but really figuratively got on the white horse after all. Am I that forgetful that such is how I recall the original from way back when, even when in that original the bad guy helps the good guy out of the mess and into the train. The thing is in this new version, the good guy is made to look morally inferior not to the bad guy, but to his own set of morality. Then he is gunned down in front of his son. Then the bad guy is made to look moral, in a perverse twisted sort of a way, by shooting his own gang, then putting himself behind bars on the train. Finally to add insult to injury as if something out of Roy Rogers he whistles for his faithful horse to follow as he is off to the territorial prison at Yuma. Please tell that was as screwed up as I saw it to be, let me know there is some decency left, if not in Hollywood, then in the hearts, minds, and souls of we who get duped into watching crap like that.

Yeah it could have been a great movie, if only the idiot who took the liberty with the movie had not taken liberties with the roots of morality by illustrating good and evil partnered up in one of the most depraved mergers of the two that I have ever witnessed. What a shame that people see it that way today.

Maybe I am too old fashioned, maybe too much of a dreamer; hell no - I know there is real good out there, and real evil too - and this movie was an absolute pervsion of the whole concept of either. Truly a disappointment in that regard, otherwise a good action, albeit very violent, movie.

All the best,
Glenn B

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the review Glenn,
Your's is the second very bad review I've heard on this bomb. I think I'll steer clear.
GreyBeard

Anonymous said...

I saw the film in question, also the original adaptation of a tight little Elmore Leonard story that expanded that hotel room conversation into a graphic tale. This latest effort is disturbing in that all the classic elements of human worth are turned on their heads and only art for its own sake can justify the stupidity of this story. Perhaps it was the small size of my TV screen that helped diminish the extraordinary landscape in which the tale unfolds yet playing it back in my head now only the grotesque human forms displayed made any lasting impression, sad to lose the last remnent of the wild west. Is it too late for us?

Anonymous said...

In the real world, a lethal prisoner would never, EVER be allowed to psychologically torment his captors verbally.

He would've been gagged immediately, and possibly blindfolded and very much bound.

Since the company wishing his incarceration would receive no reimbursement whether he lived or died, his incarceration wasn't really that important, and therefore he would've been shot to death the moment he assaulted his captors.

The only profit to be made is in his removal -- once he's dead, he can't rob you. Regardless of trial.

So the ridiculousness of the ending didn't bother me as much as the unbelievability of the general plot.

Great cast, though. Nice script, direction, cinematography and acting. Just a dumb, unbelievable plot.

Anonymous said...

No,

I disagree.

The set of morals is not really twisted, it's just realistic, even though, trust me, I agree with Dan's morals more then Wade's. But that is how it is, those who go for what they want get it, and hurt others obviously, and that is why we have crime. But Dan sees what needs to be done to provide for his family, to do what he sees as right, and his passing was the right way to end it, and it's obvious that by the end Ben Wade sees the pain and fault and vice of his old path in life, so much so that he kills all of his old gang in that, and allows himself to be possibly shot by the kid because he realizes what it does. It was a great movie, it showed a man of moral, and a man of no morals, and what that gets you, where that will take you, and they both learn from one another, Ben learns what a moral man that sacrifices is and what a tragedy it is when they are destroyed because of these men, and Dan realizes that even though morals are absolutely necessary, that this is the world, and that we need to seek out what is needed.