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3:10 to Yuma
MPAA Rating: R for violence and some language. 
Reviewed by: George 'El Guapo' Roush - 08.31.07****DISCLAIMER**** This review is for entertainment purposes only. Yeehaw! It’s another dang gum review from that thur city slicker, El Guapo! A $15.43 bounty has been put on this here wreckless reviewer fer butcherin’ whut be left of tha English langerage!Top Ten cowboy movie titles for Orlando Bloom:
Filmed in New Mexico since all of the other western locations have been torn down or had their views obstructed by giant roller coasters (Knott’s Berry Farm reference for those of you outside of southern California), or they’ve been turned into tourist traps. It doesn’t matter, since every western town looks the same. I can’t tell the difference between the one used in this movie and the one used in the Brady Bunch episode where they go to a ghost town and are put in jail by some old codger who’s trying to protect his gold. Bobby, look out for that old man filing a claim on your sexy young ass! It doesn’t matter which town they used, or if they built one from scratch, every western town instills a reminder of a time when men solved their differences with their guns and paid the local whores to remove splinters from their nuts. Today we solve our differences in court and pay the local whores to splinter our nuts in every sick way imaginable. The acting in this film is top notch and it should be. I really like Russell Crowe, and the more phones he throws at people, the more I like him. Since this film is a remake, Russell is playing the role originally played by Glenn Ford. I know you want to do your individual take on a character that was previously put to film, but Russell seems bored in certain scenes and I don’t buy his character. Even though it’s mentioned throughout the picture that he’s a bad person, we never really see him do a lot of bad things. He’s more soft spoken like Christian Bale’s character and at times I thought these two had a whispering contest going on. Christian Bale delivers once again but both of our leading men’s roles are overshadowed by guys further down the credit list. Ben Foster steals the show as Ben’s right hand man Charlie Prince. He’s an outright bastard who has one goal in mind. Rescue his boss and kill anyone who gets in the way. It’s a role Foster could have fucked up, but he took it and turned it into one of the best bad guy bastard roles since Jack Palance played a cold hearted killer in Shane. On the good guy side, Peter Fonda’s performance as the gunslinger Byron McElroy was a lot of fun to watch. It’s good to see him playing a character like this after embarrassing himself by starring in a Mark Steven Johnson movie. But I can’t imagine how hard it would be to act in a western though. You’re going to play a barkeep, a sheriff, a gunslinger or a bandit. Every role is played exactly the same except one gets to shoot their guns more than the other. The other cool thing about being in a western is you get to grow a cool mustache or just don’t shave the entire time you’re shooting. Fucking heaven for a male actor! For the females, you best keep douching. We don’t care if you’re playing a rancher’s wife, your trapdoor lips best be smelling like Tropical Rain or Island Splash. While 3:10 to Yuma is more a mind game movie between our two leads than it is a shootout film, there are a few good gunfights. The only problem is you have to wait a while in between seeing them. The middle of this film is where things start to slow to a crawl and Ben and Dan begin to form a sort of uncomfortable friendship. Ben knows Dan will bring him to the train no matter what, but there are times when Ben has the upper hand on Dan and doesn’t act on it. It kind of takes away from the killer reputation that Ben has, and you sometimes question what this man’s real motives are. Is he fascinated with Dan? Or is he merely playing with Dan, knowing his crew is coming any time to kill them all and rescue their boss? Am I supposed to end a paragraph with a question? The ending of the film is where everything gets resolved and the bullets start flying. Charlie and the gang have cornered Dan and want their boss back. But Dan, who is a former soldier, isn’t having it. It’s a great shootout and the ending is one you may not see coming. I remember my first shootout like it was yesterday. It was me against a bunch of young punks in my neighborhood. Soon as I ran out of bullets, I got out my Indian knife from some old Apache I had killed a year before and slit all of their throats, drank their blood, then raped their girlfriends. Ah, the good old days of my imagination... While 3:10 to Yuma is certainly not the best western in the last ten years (That title goes to Open Range which has one of the best shootouts ever put to film), it will still entertain you despite it’s over two hour runtime. Even though it drags in parts, the fact that you’re watching a bunch of dudes on horses shooting each other gets bonus points in my book. It’s a genre too often ignored in today’s industry when it comes to theatrical releases. But I swear to God, if they ever put Justin Timberlake in the role of a gunslinger, I’m burning every fucking western DVD I own. Put that down. You’ll shoot your eye out! It’s just safer if you e-mail: george@latinoreview.com
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