I feel like many of the people in 3:10 to Yuma are not very bright. I am spending a lot of time shouting at the screen as they do stupid thing after stupid thing.
Throughout the opening scene all I could think was WHY DON'T THEY SHOOT THE HORSES THEN THEY WON'T KEEP BEING SHOT AT. And it sort of went downhill from there.
I think they overplayed their 'everyone is a bandit in their own way and the government is the biggest bandit of all' hand a bit. It might have worked a bit better if the person constantly pointing this out wasn't the bandit who shot one of his own men.
ETA: Plus why on earth Ben Wade left the Christian Bale character alive after they were dumb enough to ride down to watch him killing people is absolutely beyond me.
Though I did admire that 19th century medicine could apparently cure a guy with a bullet wound in his stomach so well that he could ride a horse with no pain at all the next day.
I seem to go through these phases where I comment about not enjoying a set of things that one person on my flist really likes (I did it to Alexandral as well). :(
But I wouldn't say I disliked this as much as I thought it was a lot of good acting that didn't quite cover the issues with the script. Like why the gang thought that the stagecoach without any guards as all had to be carrying Ben Wade and why the good guys liked to try and be stealthy by sitting around blazing fires.
It isn't terrible - the acting is good much as if the actors are willing you to forget the completely improbable and dumb things that drive the plot. It also has that old Western problem where no one ever thinks to shoot the horse so they can stop and rob the stagecoach.
Good acting doesn't save the fact that the preview made it obvious it was All About Men and Their Pain with nary a woman in sight. If I want to watch a western, I'd rather watch John Wayne.
You're right (though there is a long suffering wife) but in all honesty for once I was too busy wondering how on earth people this dumb had survived to this age in what I was constantly being told was a harsh environment to have that bother as much as it might otherwise. Besides, I sort of figure that any film with Russell Crowe is inevitably going to be about his manly pain to the exclusion of much else.
I couldn't make it until the redemption, I'm afraid. I quite liked the acting and was sorry it wasn't enough for me to stop wanting to whack them all over the head for being so dumb.
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Date: 2008-06-29 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-06-29 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 04:44 pm (UTC)ETA: Plus why on earth Ben Wade left the Christian Bale character alive after they were dumb enough to ride down to watch him killing people is absolutely beyond me.
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Date: 2008-06-29 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 05:33 am (UTC)Maybe I can provide a service where I list things I adored and then you avoid them! (Georgette Heyer, The Sparrow, 3:10 to Yuma…) ahahaha.
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Date: 2008-06-29 06:02 am (UTC)But I wouldn't say I disliked this as much as I thought it was a lot of good acting that didn't quite cover the issues with the script. Like why the gang thought that the stagecoach without any guards as all had to be carrying Ben Wade and why the good guys liked to try and be stealthy by sitting around blazing fires.
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Date: 2008-06-29 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-06-29 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-30 10:59 pm (UTC)I fell for it like a ton of bricks, and obviously the fall made me overlook any plotholes.
YMMV, as it just did. :P
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Date: 2008-07-01 03:14 am (UTC)