Boy, have we been slacking on staying current on this site! To our few loyal readers - - THANK YOU for your patience! We actually watched this movie back on February 9th so you do the math.
WIFEY'S REVIEW
We originally started this movie at 9:20pm, but realized that our fish (swimming in a fish tank that's just below our TV on the entertainment center) had some problems and with my OCD I had to fix our floating sideways fish! Now, with that problem out of the way, we started our movie at 10:20pm instead of an hour earlier as planned.
Westerns aren’t my thing, but everyone we talked to said that this movie was a must see! They are so hard to follow in my opinion seeing as how you really don’t know who the good guys vs. the bad guys are!
Ok, so Russell Crowe being Ben Wade is the bad guy. Wade is in a lot of trouble with the law and finally it catches up to him and he gets caught by the marshals. Dan Evans (Christian Bale) needs to get some cash for his farm and family so he decides to help transport Mr. Wade to the 3:10 train to Yuma (hence the title of the movie)!
The movie really begins when they try to trick Wade's group by switching hats to throw them off and now they have to travel by horse to the train station and that forces them to overcome lots of obstacles without getting killed by Wade's group.
Talk about a lot of shooting, it was like every 5 minutes somebody was getting killed (I guess that’s what Westerns are all about).
Dan’s son comes to the rescue at one point when Wade highjacks one of the guns along the way just about the point when Wade is going to go free he shows up and saves the day! It’s amazing how family is always important no matter how rich you are or how poor you are!
Ok, one other thing that I had to laugh about was how money was so different back in those days, seeing how Dan was so happy to get $200 and that would put food on their table, buy a couple of livestock, and rebuild their barn.
Anyway, the movie was hard to follow for me, but thanks to Hubby he kept me up to speed with it!
I really didn’t enjoy this movie so I would rate it only 1 Ben & Jerry’s out of 5.
HUBBY'S REVIEW
Traditionally, I’m not a big fan of Westerns. I’m like the only man who’s never seen a Dirty Harry movie and the extent of my exposure to these acquired tastes include Young Guns, and, most recently, Deadwood. Simply put, I guess I was born without the gene that allows you to appreciate these types of movies.
Even so, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! The Christian Bale character is phenomenal as he’s a principled man, a man of good character, a strong husband and a father. In other words, a man after my own heart.
He is in direct contrast with the character played by Russell Crowe and there’s something to be said for the Western genre in that they always seem to do an excellent job of clearly defining right and wrong. Rarely is there any middle ground and there are definitely consequences for every decision and action.
At times, both characters seem to resemble the extreme polar opposite of the other and it’s this duality that creates a dramatic tension throughout the film. As the story develops, we see that they are actually quite similar in a lot of ways or, at least in the ways that really matter.
In a strange way, both men share a mutual respect for one another even though they’ve chosen vastly different lifestyles.
In the end, I found myself engrossed in this film and pulling for both characters as they neared their fates.
The question we are left with at the moment of truth, the final judgment is what’s more important - - the lives of others or our lives?
Sometimes the answer depends on determining first what’s the “right” thing to do and what’s the “wrong” thing to do.
I give it 3 Ben & Jerry’s out of 5 giving this an OMD Rating of 2 thanks to Wifey's insanely low score.
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