3:10 to Yuma

I went to this movie to recover from the Bears loss, and it worked well enough for that. It's gotten some pretty amazing reviews, all of which indicated that it is a "good" movie, a serious film that is good because it takes itself seriously, because it allows viewers to project conflict between the protagonist and antagonist into something vaguely philosophical/meaningful, because it has some serious acting in which the actors fully inhabit their characters, etc. (I need to come up with a better formulation of that idea. Essentially, it's that the "good" movie is as much a genre of movie as action, comedy, romance (or romantic comedy?), etc. Mostly, the "good" movie is just a subgenre of drama, and critics tend to go nuts when a Good Movie disguises itself as a less reputable genre--typically some offshoot of action, like sci fi. Still need to come up with a better articulation of all of this.)

Anyway, critics love this movie because it takes the somewhat disreputable genre of the Western and turns it into Good Movie. And it does a pretty good job of it. Russell Crowe is about as fun to watch as he's been in any movie I've seen him in, except for maybe Master and Commander. And I always love watching Christian Bale act. Oh, and Tucker! from Flash Forward! !!! Is really very good as the creepy super villain guy, who functions mainly to be shot by Crowe at the end so the audience can really feel that Crowe has changed somehow.

Really, the climax was the part that I thought worked the least. Even though the scene with Bale and Crowe alone in their room was supposed to be the big crux of the thing, and there was evidently supposed to be some kind of big meeting of their souls or something, I just didn't quite get it. It pretty much just let the audience off the hook, I think. The movie had moved itself into a situation where there wasn't really a possible good ending, and then suddenly Russell Crowe realizes that Christian Bale is the only guy in the film who can equal his charisma, or something? I mean, it was a very satisfying ending, because Crowe was just too likeable to be all bad, as Bale's son correctly surmised. I think what bothers me most about it is that it really is just shallowness, and pretty extreme shallowness, masquerading as depth, because this is a Good Movie, so it's obviously deep. Ultimately, the ethic of the movie is that charismatic people are less dispensable than non-charismatic people, and that likeable people always have a good heart, deep down--at least when it comes to people they recognize as similarly charismatic and likeable. Because Bale is the only person in the whole movie who dies who the audience even cares in the slightest that they've died, and his death is avenged immediately by the slaughter of all of Crowe's posse by Crowe. But Crowe's character is a truly reprehensible person, and Bale's is actually kind of an idiot who sacrifices his life for his sons' adolescent fantasies of heroism, but there's supposed to something noble about the way it all ends.

I thought Tucker from Flash Forward's character, who really consisted of nothing more than an impenetrable set of tics and an unblinking stare, was the highlight of the movie, and in the end is the most honest thing about the movie. By never acting recognizably human he manages to be extremely charismatic and enjoyable without suckering the audience into buying his personal code of ethics. He obviously has one, but we are left to judge it instead of invited into it. Why do I find that preferable? I don't know... I'm not sure why "honesty" seems to me like such an important measure of a movie to me... or what exactly I mean by "honesty," here...