The pleasures of pure-form genre storytelling, top-shelf acting and accomplished filmmaking all come together in 3:10 to Yuma, a dusty treat that’s certainly the most rousing Western in recent memory and probably the best since Unforgiven.
It’s a movie that fires on all cylinders and recalls Muhammad Ali’s old
assessment of his fighting strategy: “Float like a butterfly, sting
like a bee.” Full of quiet, lulling character moments, but visited as
well by tense, charged action passages, director James Mangold’s film tells a line-in-the-sand tale of at-odds wills that could easily be transposed to any number of settings.

Russell Crowe),
who, along with his vicious gang of thieves and murderers, has plagued
the powerful Southern Railroad’s plans for expansion by preying on
their delivery routes and robbing their bank shipments. After his
latest strike leaves Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda, above right) wounded and a handful
of others dead, Wade holes up in a nearby town, intent on squeezing out
a few last ounces of pleasure with the fetching local barkeep (Vinessa Shaw) before escaping to Mexico.

When Wade is captured, however, a dilemma presents itself. Knowing that
Wade’s crew will be back to attempt to spring him, McElroy and
ineffectual railroad employee Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts) make
the call that holing up and waiting for reinforcements — in effect
making targets of the entire town and all of its citizens — isn’t the
best plan. Volunteers are sought to help deliver Wade alive to an out-of-town depot and the scheduled train to Yuma two days hence, a
train that will take the killer to trial and return some small sense of
safety and normalcy to their region.

Partially crippled Civil War veteran Dan Evans (Christian Bale) steps forward. Struggling to survive on his drought-plagued ranch,
Evans feels quietly emasculated by a wife, Alice (Gretchen Mol), and
headstrong teenage son, William (Logan Lerman), who each in their own
way question his cautious nature and every decision. “I’m tired of the
boys going hungry, tired of the way they look at me, and tired of the
way that you don’t,” Evans tells Alice. “I’ve been standing on one leg
for three years waiting for God to do me a favor, and he ain’t.” Out on
the trail, Evans and Wade start to feel one another out, engaging in
restrained forms of psychological battle. A cool,
curious respect for Evans even springs forth in Wade, but with his outfit — led by the leering, psychopathic Charlie Prince (Ben Foster,
strengthening his power-play grab at becoming the Gary Oldman of his
generation) — on their trail, and violence and other dangers at every
turn, the odds of success for Evans’ mission soon take a dip southward,
culminating in a holed-up showdown with each man’s future at stake.

3:10 to Yuma isn’t what you’d call modern, per se, but neither
does it hew to what Rudy Giuliani might dub a strict constructionist
interpretation of the Western genre. Michael Brandt and Derek Haas’
reworking of Halsted Welles’ screenplay for the original film takes
only moderate liberties in dialogue, but adds in bits with Apache
warriors and transcontinental railroad workers that give the movie a
nicely fleshed-out feel and broader narrative backdrop. Meanwhile,
composer Marco Beltrami’s score (especially the opening theme) has a
glorious old-school ring to it. It’s most in the design and visual
telling of 3:10 to Yuma
that flared bits of modernization creep in. Mangold and cinematographer
Phedon Papamichael (a frequent collaborator of the director who’s also
captured disparate outdoor tones and palettes in movies like The Weather Man and Sideways)
beef up the action and infuse proceedings with a galloping energy.
Arianne Phillips’ costume design, meanwhile, faintly but effectively
conveys the notion of Wade’s gang as swaggering, rock-star seizers of
whatever they want; in a high school flick, they’d be the perfectly
coiffed jocks, in a horror film, vampires.

What most works about 3:10 to Yuma, though, is just the natural, slow-burn pull of its two stars, each working at the top of their games here. Crowe oozes edgy charisma in real life, so it’s no great shock
that he excels in a role requiring a bit of malevolent seduction.
Equally important, though, is Bale, who gives a superlative performance
as a broken family man awakening to the invigorating strength of a task
greater than him, and the power of a lasting lesson he can teach his son. For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here. To view the film’s trailer, click here.

As self-centered illusionist Gob Bluth on the brilliant if short-lived sitcom Arrested Development,  Will Arnett wrung laughs out of his character’s flamboyant combination of
insecurity, competitiveness and showmanship. During his career as both
a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, Will Forte has
shown a penchant for embracing the absurd — whether in recurring bits
as soft-voiced politician Tim Calhoun and the bearded, woodsy loner
known as the Falconer, or in a sketch last year with Peyton Manning in
which he played a high school coach who delivers his halftime stump
speech in the form of an extended, goofy, improvisational dance. While
each actor has appeared in a couple movies up to this point — most
notably Arnett in this spring’s $100 million-plus hit Blades of Glory, opposite wife Amy Poehler — both performers are trying to find their way when it comes to movies.
In a way, they’re each attempting to follow in the footsteps of SNL alumnus Will Ferrell,
who, largely courtesy of his golden touch with intense himbo
vacuousness, has successfully transitioned from small screen funnyman
to someone that audiences would actually pay to see on the big screen.

The Brothers Solomon, starring Arnett (above left) and Forte (right, also the film’s writer) as two goodhearted but romantically challenged
brothers who decide to try to father a baby in order to give their
coma-stricken father (Lee Majors) something to live for. Coming on the heels of both Knocked Up and Superbad earlier this summer, The Brothers Solomon combines elements of the former’s prenatal hijinks with rudiments of the latter’s fraternal bonding.

While there’s just a pinch of Dumb & Dumber-style comedy to
the proceedings, John (Arnett) and Dean (Forte) are mostly just
socially inept, yet still somehow unflappably, unfailingly
positive-minded. After a string of dates leave them still unable to
find a woman “to enter,” as John puts it, the undeterred siblings
change tactics and place an online ad for a surrogate partner. Janine (Kristen Wiig) responds to the brothers’ entreaty
and, for a hefty fee, agrees to carry a child to term for them, even as
John works on a back-up plan in the form of neighbor Tara (Malin Ackerman). As the
pregnancy progresses and Dean and John embark on an ill-advised
crash-course of their own devising on parenting, Janine and her
ex-but-now-on-again boyfriend James (Chi McBride) — a strange fourth
wheel in the relationship — eventually begin to warm to the brothers’
full-court-press enthusiasm.

Some of the script’s few baroque touches — like the fact that the
brothers, upon hearing that their father is in the hospital, hurriedly
stop by the video store to dispute a late charge on a rental of Ulee’s Gold — make for nice laughs, but, for the most part, The Brothers Solomon is a wan showcase presentation; it’s the filmic equivalent of a performance-centric one-man show that just happens to have two stars. The problem, though, is that the brothers’ serial oddness — both of the actors’ performances are powered by waxy, perpetual smiles — could and probably should be taken as creepy, or at least a little more strange. For much of the movie, though, there’s a strange absence of conflict or tension, which means we’re just playing out a string. Ergo, devoted fans
of the principals will be suitably entertained, others by degrees less so. For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here.