Never Seen It #260: 3:10 to Yuma

Safe! Who knows what's safe? I knew a man dropped dead from lookin' at his blog. My own grandmother watched 400 movies she'd never seen before for sixty years... then choked to death on lemon pie. Do I have two volunteers?

3:10 to Yuma

1957

Delmer Daves

Thanks for joining us today, glad you made it in time (despite heavy gunfire). Group E has their final movie pick as a group this week. Check out our thoughts, and meet us below in the comments.

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Allison

"Ah, it's a Seven Samurai, except there's more of them and they're mostly cowards and idiots." I don't have strong feelings about this one. Westerns aren't really my jam. I don't yearn for the Old West, where men were stubborn and sweaty, and women were either nagging wives or boinkable barmaids. And it's far too dusty!

The strongest performances came from Ben and Emmy. For two characters whose chemistry waned in their initial meeting, I was clutching my pearls as they sauntered back to the bar after their off-screen cowboy boinking. My god, that was suggestive. That said, Emmy, girl, that's a bad dude. Slim pickin's in the old west, I s'pose. Honorable mentions to Dan's sons, Mathew and the other one, who gave equally authentic performances as grating and irritating children. The dinner scene was funny. I truly wanted to reach back in time and smack them. Bravo, boys!

The ending is kind of crap, right? Ben just shrugs off his pending incarceration after all that hassle. Well, I've broken out of Yuma before; might as well enjoy this nice train ride. What did the chinless town drunk even die for? At least it's raining, I guess.

2.5/5 dirty hands in your water barrel

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Joe

I was thinking about train rides, about missing trains, making scheduled trains by the skin of your teeth. Did I ever tell you about my and Pam's first date? 5/10/10. Time occasionally melds stories together, so don't quote me on any of this, but I'm pretty sure this is how it went. I was gonna catch the train down to the city, where Pammy lived. I was walking down to the station, already a bit behind, and noticed about halfway there that I had a pretty ugly yellow stain on my shirt, origins unknown. So I ran back to the house, threw on another shirt, and begged my pops for a ride. And step on it! I barrel-rolled out the passenger seat at the station parking lot, ran alongside the train, and hopped on as it was gaining speed. I got tsk-tsked by the ticket collector, but these types of dangerous maneuvers are justified in retrospect, especially when the train that you barely made gets you to your first date with your future wife in time.

Saying 3:10 to Yuma is about a train would be like saying Titanic was about a lifeboat. I'm just idly musing. That's my "I made the train" story. Dan Evans has a different story. He gets infamous outlaw Ben Wade to the train in time. Different train story. But actually, not really. When you break it down into its thematic essence, you have two family men doing what they had to do, doing what's right both for their loved ones and for their own personal credo and code.

Okay.... fuck, even that's stretching it, because I wasn't a family man on 5/10/10. Sorry, my thoughts are getting convoluted now. What I'm TRYING to say is that I felt a kinship with Dan Evans. The arc with his wife from "you can't just stand around and watch" to "please just keep yourself safe" hit pretty hard for me. Add in the immortal, universal quote of "in six months, we won't be so tired all the time... in six months, we'll be happy." Jesus fucking christ, I'm living that shit right now. I don't want to be here in the office at all hours of the night. I'm tired all the goddamn time. But a man's gotta have a code. A man's gotta provide for his family. I'm right there with Dan, ready to knock the block off Wade when he's spouting off about doing a better job of providing for his wife. That fuck! We're trying over here! And what's more, our wives totally get it. They appreciate it. They are worried and thankful and in love. Can't wait to slip into bed tonight at 12:15 AM. Maybe it'll be raining.

Holy fucking shit this was a good movie. Not that I've seen many Westerns, but this was probably my favorite Western I've ever seen. The story was tense and taut, and quite simple. Get the bad guy to the train without his goons recapturing him. He would've gotten away if one man didn't stand up for what is right, at great personal cost. That ending was fucking earned, man. I thought it was gonna end with the wife waving, elated. That would've been enough for me, honestly. But then it started raining. God fucking damn it. Incredible ending.

I'm not saying that anything I do or have done compares to facing gunfire from enemies on all sides. What I'm saying is that the specific display of bravery in sticking to one's beliefs that we see from Dan Evans is something I aspire to. Sometimes, that's makes a good movie—not that you see yourself, but you see who you want to be. I don't know if I'm going to make the train, but I'm trying my best here.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

STRAY THOUGHTS: After writing this but before publishing, I mentioned to a couple people that I had seen 3:10 to Yuma and was of course hit with the "did you watch the original or the remake," as if that's a fucking question at this point. If I'm attempting to take film seriously, then it doesn't make sense to me to start with a remake. Even if the remake is better. And it probably is! There are 50 years' worth of improvements in that Crowe/Bale feature, I don't doubt that they did a great job with it. I might even watch it eventually! But something about it feels wrong to me, to watch a remake. I don't know. This is a true stray thought, and maybe I'm just saying it to justify the reason we are here talking about a classic '50s flick and not a modern take on it from the '00s.

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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

See you in the comments!

(NEXT TIME: Speaking of train(wreck)s, we get to witness Kevin Spacey's career highlight in American Beauty.)