310 to Yuma

Boys will be boys. Boys love westerns. Westerns have lots of action, shooting, men being men and, you know, dying in the dirt. Westerns sort of took it on the nose as not cool there for awhile, until Dances With Wolves brought them moderately back into fashion. And since the Powers of Hollywood don't have an original thought among them, when someone says 'let's make us a Western,' someone else dug out something to remake. The original (1957) starred Glen Ford. You already know it was better.

The oh so classic western storyline: white hat noble farmer type Dan Evans (Christian Bale) volunteers to see that black hat train robber type Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) actually makes the train that will take him to a fair trial and prison for his multiple misdeeds. Of course, Ben's gang is out to save him and everyone else is quaking in their boots so our hero must do all this alone. In order to impress his smart ass teenage son with his Courage. And make him proud. Probably post mortem. And of course, Dan and Ben will grow to Respect One Another.

Okay, the hokey story line would work better with Glen Ford as Ben and Van Helflin as the doomed Dan. But Western story lines are always just that hokey, and at least this version tries for a little gritty realism in costuming (nobody looks clean at all,) set detail and sound. You have to dig the nifty little way the bullets plink and plunk as they fly about (this actually won an Oscar for sound!) Christian works his over thin booty off, Russell seems to be having fun, but the film is stolen by Ben Foster as the very psychotic Charlie - second in command of the gang and deeply committed to his boss (he's scary and hilarious.) It's entertaining, but you can easily take a potty break without hitting pause.... Check out the website here.