Given the hostility towards the movie on this board I imagine I'm alone in this, but I'm still waiting for the continuing adventures of Bed Wade, possibly involving Dan's sons as bounty hunters. Crowe was mesmerising in this film and I'd like to see more of him.
shareantcross,
A truly obsessed hater like mgt can give the wrong impression. I think this film is admired far more than hated. I think it was an excellent film.
antcross,
A truly clueless lover of dreck like kenny-164 can give the wrong impression. I think this film is panned in Western Aficionado circles far more than loved. I think it was an exercise in typical for the masses implausable Hollywood dreck.
I can dig it! I loved this movie and try not to worry about what the haters say, there's always at least one in the crowd and their opinion really means less than nothing.
shareOK newfrontier, shure, go pedal your "love" over on the Western board and see how fast you get shot out of the saddle. This film is nowhere in the same universe as the Great Westerns, wake up and smell the coffee.
shareSon, I'm not "pedaling" anything. I really don't care what you or anybody else has to say. Especially anybody on IMDB which is mostly a haven for teenage trolls and wannabe critics like yourself. I don't know who you think you are but for a movie you hate so much, you sure troll the board a lot. Try speaking to people with respect, as one would typically do in person and you may be taken seriously.
I grew up on westerns. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, along with most other stuff made in the `50's, `60's and `70's were what I knew as a kid. I've been shooting and collecting single action revolvers and leverguns since I could hold one up. Tom Selleck made me a fan of Colt cartridge conversions. I've just spent $2000 having a replica of the Colt 1871-1872 Open Top (the gun he took from the ship's captain in Crossfire Trail) engraved, charcoal blued and stocked in ivory. I'm also a professional leathermaker specializing in old west gunleather, who offers replicas of both Ben Wade's "Hand of God" rig and Charlie Prince's "Flames of Hell". So I've spent a little time on this "stuff", come by my opinions honestly and really don't give a damn if you agree or not. YOU can go pedal your BS somewhere else, because you're a damn fool if you think you're going to influence my opinion.
PS, Google Theodore Roosevelt's quote about critics to glean my opinion of wannabe critics like yourself.
Pard, I also grew up on Westerns and lived in Montana for half my life, my contention and the point of this whole little exercise is that Westerns that were made in the 1939-1973 "Golden Age of The Western" (both in film & TV) have a certain pallet, part of it is a look that we who lived through that period or those of us that are Western Aficionados or just have seen a lot of Westerns recognize as being the "correct look" a feel that is the "correct feel" and certain traits that comprise the "correct deportment's" for a Western. Once you get those conventions correct then you can, within those conventions, try and push the envelope in a creative way.
Granted that during that time period there was a gradual flexibility in character motivations between 1939 and and the early 1960's, look at the controversy surrounding the psychological Westerns and notably "High Noon". Later a more jarring one with coming of the anti hero in the Spaghetti Westerns, but the conventional look stayed generally within the same boundaries. We also had a more realistic depiction of violence ratcheted up over that period.
Our stable of actors that could make a convincing lead in a Western are limited. In the Golden Age the lead actor had a weary weathered leathery look and was usually in his thirties or older and was show to be wise beyond his years. The actors in their twenties played the young hot heads or the naive and inexperienced kids who usually made a fatal mistake and got blown away early. Now a days the scheme is turned on its head, its the young adults and teens who are showed to be more knowledgeable than their elders, it may be playing to today's audience demographics but it doesn't ring true.
On top of all that you had a stable of conventional character actors who made a career of just appearing in film Westerns and in TV Westerns who also contributed to that same "correct look" over the transitional change from cowboy as boy scout to cowboy as antihero in the span of their lives.
Forget the hewing close to historical accuracy BS, or trying to hard to get the archaic speech patterns correct, the more modern directors attempt to make a Western too true to the actual historical West the farther they get away from the classic Western and its look. That also goes for trying to make a Western in "action flick" disguise, or trying to be PC.
Watching a Western should be like slipping into a comfortable old pair of shoes.
Westerns and early cinema you could say almost say go hand in hand. 1903’s “Great Train Robbery “ was filmed while the West was still “Wild”. Harvey Logan “Kid Curry” (one of the last of the Wild Bunch) robbed his last train outside of Parachute, Colorado, in 1904. So Westerns in effect were contemporary cinema at the time they were first filmed. Even as progress spread rapidly on both coasts in the interior US West it reached only major towns and cities while isolated pockets remained off the grid for decades, even today there remain areas off the grid entirely. Most old timers I’ve interviewed concur that noticeable progress didn’t take effect until the post WWII era when tracked vehicles replaced horse and steam.
The artisans who were responsible for early Westerns lived in that contemporary twilight of the West Era. They, especially if they were born West of the Mississippi or had emigrated to the West from Europe, grew up with a hands on knowledge of Native Americans, cowboys, prospectors, how to work horses, they drove horse drawn vehicles, saw steam power, saw the last of the Transcontinental Railways (The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific RR) completed in 1909, used telegraph lines, kerosene lamps, barbed wire, saw the first motor cars, the first telephones networks, the first electric power grids. They had an actual ancestral or a hands on knowledge of the West that they applied to the films or informed the films they made regardless of the scripts and overly melodramatic screenplays.
Classic Westerns died with the disruption of the studio system and the stability it provided, and with the loss of the handed down knowledge of how to make a Western that looks and plays like a Western when Westerns weren’t being made, at about the same time the old school filmmakers died off and the old sets were sold for housing tracts or burned down.
But we are really not getting Westerns any longer, Westerns as we knew them are DEAD, we are in the Neo Western Age where to make a Western everything has to be recreated from scratch by directors, production people, and actors with no actual handed down or hands on knowledge.
This is NOT a good Western.
Thank you for engaging in an actual conversation.
Of course they have a certain palate. It was the Golden Age of Westerns. What we have to remember is that the Western genre was mainstream back then. Everything has changed. Most people come from an urban setting. Even most shooters have never fired a shot anywhere but an indoor range. The times have changed. People have changed. Westerns are no longer "cool". Colt single actions are a niche within a niche. Glocks are cool. Most kids are sitting around fantasizing about saving the damsel in distress with his trusty Colt. These days it's all about machine guns and Japanese cars. It's a dying genre because the generations of movie watchers that loved them are dying. Movies have had to change with the times or get left behind. A John Ford western made in 2013 would flop worse than John Carter. A movie has to appeal to a wide audience to succeed. Westerns used to do that but no longer. You can't make a movie like they did in the `50's and it do anything. Moviemakers are having to re-invent the Western because it's the only way the genre will survive. Fact is, nobody wants to see the highly idealized version of the past depicted in the Westerns of the `50's and `60's. Where everybody was clean shaven and had clean clothes. Where people were polite and everything was black & white. They want something more realistic. As much as I love the old stuff, I don't want to watch a new version of it either. I would see it as an uninteresting mockery. Those movies couldn't be made at any other time in history and it's best left there. Which is fine because there is a place for it to go.
New Westerns are more historically correct. We don't have men in the near post Civil War era toting Colt SAA's (1873) and Winchester 1892's. They spent two years collecting two samples of original guns before they started Tombstone. Who did that in the `50's? This movie in particular should be lauded for its use of Colt cartridge conversions in the hands of poor folks like Evans. Newer westerns are more gritty and realistic. Life was hard in those times and people died constantly. Sometimes the action gets to be a little off the wall but you have to suspend your disbelief while watching any movie. Costumes are much more varied and period correct. In the 1950's, everybody wore clean clothes, virtually the same except for color. Very few people back then were duded up in a suit wherever they went or wore clothes washed daily. The Dean Martin/Robert Mitchum drunken characters were the exception in the old days and they stood out like a sore thumb. They wouldn't have stood out in the 1880's. The bad men of those days were truly bad men. John Wesley Hardin and Clay Allison were true killers with no redeeming qualities. Movies should reflect that. Modern Westerns do a better job at this with characters like Charlie Prince. The problem is people like you who run them down because they're not made like the `50's. The question is, what is? Bad as I hate it, you can't go to your local dealer and buy a `55 Chevy any more.
I'm not sure what you mean by young punk actors. Christian Bale is almost 40, or about 7 months older than myself. Van Heflin was 47 when the original was released. Russell Crowe is almost 50yrs old. That's nine years older than Glenn Ford was. Peter Fonda is an old man and Ben Foster is the youngest of the main characters at 32. Richard Jaeckel was 31 in the original.
I thought the remake was very good, better than the original. But then again, I go into a movie 'wanting' to like it. Not to look for fault. If all you're doing is looking for fault, you're going to find it. Sure, it has flaws like any other movie but for me, the overall experience is very good. I think you went into it not expecting to like it and that's a tough situation for any movie to overcome. Like most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Walk in sour, walk out sour.
Critics criticize. I'm not a critic. I love them for what they are, rather than hating them for what they're not.
quote from dave jenkins a good friend of mine:
The gang rides into town and sets up under the hotel window from which five armed men are overwatching. The gang are murderers, wanted men, known to law enforcement officers. The men in the hotel room include three peace officers. They have every legal and moral right to open up on the gang as soon as they appear. They also have the advantage of higher ground. No additional advantage can be gained by delaying. It is the height of idiocy that the men in the hotel room don't immediately start firing on the gang below! Further, even if they were to delay, the moment the gang starts offering the 200 dollar bounty the lawmen would begin firing just to shut the men up and discourage takers. But the men in the hotel room are completely passive. Yet this is just one stupidity in a sequence of hundreds in this stupid movie.
Equally stupid things happen on the trail from the farm to Contention. The group leaves at night, under cover of darkness. Presumably, speed and concealment are the two things the party is most concerned with. In the very next scene, however, we see them lounging about by a campfire. Why have they stopped? They want to make time, and they should want to do it in the dark. Also, stopping means having to put a watch on Wade while the others sleep. For some reason, Wade is allowed freedom of movement throughout the night (his manacled hands aren't much inconvenienced). Then, only one man is left to watch the notorious killer (a union rule?). In the morning, the watchman is dead. Incredibly, the men just write him off and proceed with their journey! All psychological plausibility goes out of the movie at that point. If you are traveling with a murderer, and he murders one of your company, you just don't continue on with the status quo ante. You reassess the situation. In the present case, you realize that getting the guy to Yuma may not be do-able, that even with your full crew it was gonna be tough, but now with one man short it is likely impossible. The guy who decided Wade had to go to Yuma (and who is bankrolling the expedition) is along, and therefore should call an audible. Even if he doesn't, the rest of the crew should prevail upon him to change the terms of the expedition. They should realize that all their lives are likely forfeit if Wade continues to live. They should do the rational thing: kill Wade on the spot.
Instead, they go merrily on their way, allowing Wade to kill again. Even then the group doesn't learn.
Then there is the "shortcut" through the pass, which we are told is controlled by hostile Indians. This shortcut requires another night and another campfire. What the *beep*
Then there's the stupid digression with the mining camp. What the *beep*
Finally, reaching Contention, more stupidities abound, as cited above (but not exhaustively. It would take 2 pages of text to enumerate all the idiotic things that occur there).
The original film was not flawless. It had great style and a good set-up, but the story turned stupid at the end. One problem was with the basic concept: waiting for a train. If you are traveling with a prisoner, the only reason to take him to a hotel is to conceal him. The moment his whereabouts is known, the hotel is a liability. You have enormous blind spots in a hotel room, and your mobility is compromised. Also, getting the guy from the hotel to the depot is something of a problem (as we see). Better to forget the hotel and go straight to the depot. Who cares if there aren't enough chairs for everyone, at least you have clear fields of fire in all directions.
But why wait for the train at all? Such a tactic fixes you in place, and allows the gang to catch up. A more prudent course would be to ride up the line toward the oncoming train and hail it as it approaches. You keep ahead of the outlaws, and then gain an earlier speed advantage. Also, why not use the telegraph and call for reinforcements? Maybe Contention is a worthless town, but why wouldn't there be towns up and down the line where reliable helpers could be recruited? Why not contact the army? They too have an interest in seeing Wade and his gang brought to justice.
If you do a remake of a film, you should set out to improve on the original. In the case of 3:10, a serious revision in the plot was called for. The remakers not only didn't fix the old problems, they created hundreds more. I'm really disappointed that they didn't adopt the obvious solution: put the good guys on the train early, and then have Wade's gang try to stop it. A running train battle would have been cool. The most important thing, though, would have been to have characters acting like rational beings, not pawns in a stupid plot. This remake gets 1/5, as do all stupid films.
Like I said, everybody is a critic and critics look for fault. I guess some folks just can't see past the flaws. If you're waiting for a movie that will appeal to the ignorant masses and not have any flaws, you'll be waiting a very, very long time. In the meantime, I will take my pleasures where I find them and disregard the rest. Life is too short.
Good day sir.
frontier,
As you have seen, talking with mgt is a complete waste of time. I have had him on ignore for years now. He adds nothing to this board.
Yuma I felt was one of the top ten films of the previous decade. Excellent performances from a great cast right on down to the third level players. This in itself is a great achievement for the makers of this film, since I have a hard time looking around and seeing many suitable candidates for this kind of film.
I also like the overall feel of the film. It is produced differently than the great westerns of yore, but it has a feel similar to them.
And it has a compelling story in the clash and mediation between the central characters.
Too bad the haters can't get past their hating ways and see the film for what it is. Oh well.
frontier,
Kenny likes to beat dead horses, he's also a LIAR, I'll never put him on ignore he's just too damn entertaining, more than the movie in fact.
[deleted]
This message has been hidden because the poster is in your ignore list: mgtbltp
Heh.
Yea, sort of like hiding behind your mama's apron.
Heh.
And that right there is where you show your true colors and why nobody with half a brain can take your opinion and trolling on this movie seriously. Mimicking a factual objective message back with a elementary school level insult to be more precise. All done while wearing nostalgia goggles and a magnifying glass in hand with a closed minded brain directing its movement.
shareIf you like the movie then read more of Elmore Leonard's novels he is the most brilliant american writer and has been compared to Charles Dickens as a storyteller. The book on which this movie is based is a short story and I mean short as is the entire Justified TV series about US Marshal Waylan Givens (Timothy Oliphant).
The more of his books you read the more addicted you become, Get Shorty, Be Cool are both great movies all from the same man.
I'll give him a try, thanks. I enjoy Justified so maybe I'll start with the short story that's based on before moving on to this one.
shareJust because a movie is good, it doesn't justify a sequel. Hollywood often sucks at sequels. Leave a tender moment alone.
shareNot every movie needs a cheesy fuxxin sequel ! We just had the entire summer of 2016 full of garbage sequels. They all were made to sucker the general movie going public because the studios knew dummies like you would fall for half of them and pay to see a half ass phoned trash. Hardly any original quality movies this year just commercialized nonsense.
So no, hopefully they done make "the adventures of Ben wade"
I totally agree OP
share