Cynical Cinema

That’s eight out of ten on my randomly-decided-upon measuring stick for movies. The box for the Russell Crowe - Christian Bale remake of 3:10 to Yuma says “The Best Western Since Unforgiven!” This is not true. It is, however, the SECOND best western since Unforgiven. The best one was a little-seen film called The Proposition, starring Guy Pearce, and it was a phenomenal film. What 3:10 to Yuma understands very, very well is the western hero. The greatest westerns all had heroes cut from one of two cloths. Either they were generally decent people who didn’t want to use guns but were forced into it, like Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales, or Gary Cooper in High Noon, or Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Or, they were tough, rugged frontier men who did not fear death, who were perfectly happy using a pistol, but they had a dark side and were not all good. Like Clint Eastwood in The Good The Bad and the Ugly, William Holden in the Wild Bunch, John Wayne in The Searchers, or Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. True western heroes are never the type that are happy, upstanding citizens who also are great gunfighters who don’t fear death and are dangerous to bad guys but perfectly safe to good guys. That hero is the mark of a less interesting western movie. One that can still be good, but never great.

Another thing 3:10 to Yuma gets right is the villain. Yes. I hate it in movies when the bad guy whoots his own man just to prove what a bad guy he really is. And yes, Russell Crowe shoots his own man in the very first scene he’s in. But this time, it is with a purpose. It is not an attempt to make him into the personification of evil, he actually has a reason. Both Crowe and Christian Bale are absolutely fantastic in the movie, both playing the western “heroes” with shades of grey. Peter Fonda is fantastic as well, as a grizzled old Pinkerton detective, a standard character in the old westerns - the lawman charged with upholding the law who may actually be more evil than the man he is bringing to justice.

And that is what makes 3:10 to Yuma fantastic. This film really is a throwback to the western tradition of the 1950s when the original was made. That is one reason this is not a classic western. Really, there is nothing new here. This is just a revitalization and a masterful rendition of an old genre. There are two other things (two characters, in fact) that hold the movie back from being truly great - but it isn’t really the movie’s fault. You see, at the time in the 1950s, these two characters were in many of the westerns. But since then, these characters have become standard in countless movies, and so they seem like cliches. The one character is Crowe’s right-hand man, played by Ben Foster. He is the psychotic killer we see all too often in movies, the man who will kill anyone without compunction, but who looks upon his mentor with a kind of respect that borders on worship. The other character is Bale’s young son, who is almost cartoonish at the beginning of the film with his bitterness at his father and his lack of respect for his toughness. Of course we know he will respect his father by the end of the film, so it seems like overkill with so much of it at the beginning.

But the best part of 3:10 to Yuma is Russell Crowe. He is magnificent as the outlaw with ambiguous motives, he’s absolutely captivating whenever he is on the screen. He is able to walk a fine line between charm and menace, and it’s such a magnetic performance that we never lose sight of who he is. A killer and a bandit with some kind of conscience. He makes every scene he’s in come to life, and that’s almost the entire movie. The gunfights are great - realistic and gritty, if a little stylized. The final gun battle is also the second best since Unforgiven (number two is that final gun fight in Open Range.)

This is definitely the best well-publicized western since Unforgiven, but there have been quite a few good ones in the last few years, for all you western fans - Seraphim Falls was terrific, Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson turned in some great performances. The Proposition was criminally overlooked. Dead Man also, although that may well be because it is just so weird. But definitely worth seeing. And Open Range was a pretty good representation of the genre. It’s a genre that has been called dead many times, but with films like 3:10 to Yuma, one can only hope that the next resurrection of the western is coming soon.

There is a bit of controversy over the shutout of American Gangster at the Oscars. It was not nominated for best picture, and both Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington were shut out of the nominations for best actor. I understand the snub of Crowe. (Frankly, he deserves it more for 3:10 to Yuma than he does for this movie.) But the only reason I can think of for snubbing Washington is that he is too tailor-made for this part. You forget that he is an actor, because you’re watching Denzel Washington. As though it were a reality show about his life. If Denzel killed people and ran a drug empire and married Miss Puerto Rico, this would be exactly what his life would look like. The one role he has played to which I could compare this one was in Training Day, and he won the Oscar for that one. And here, he is better. That really is the strength of American Gangster, the performances.

Not just Washington, but Russell Crowe is reliably terrific as the cop tracking him down, and the supporting cast is remarkably good. The RZA, of the Wu-Tang clan, appears here, and as soon as I saw him I thought “oh, no! A rapper in a major role means this movie will start to hit Seagal territory in parts”. But the RZA is good. So is Armand Assante, who I love, and Josh Brolin as a crooked cop. Cuba Gooding Jr. is in the film also, and I absolutely hate Cuba Gooding Jr. However, he has maybe five lines, total, and wasn’t around long enough to irritate me. I also really like the inclusion of Clarence Williams III as Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. Johnson was a real-life legendary gangster figure in New York, and he was the subject of the under-rated 1997 movie “Hoodlum”, where he was played by Lawrence Fishburne in one of the best roles of his career.

In American Gangster, Bumpy dies near the beginning, and his right-hand-man, chauffeur and gopher, Frank Lucas, is left a little adrift. Frank is played by Denzel Washington, and he has few choices. Now that his mentor is gone, he can either leave town and go back to his family, or work for someone else, or take matters into his own hands. Of course, he chooses the third option and rises to power as the number one dealer, importer and gangster in New York. He manages to exist on the periphery, away from the other gangsters, the corrupt cops, and the good cops. One of those good cops is Russell Crowe, who has been blackballed by his police department for being a good cop. In a few scenes very reminiscent of Serpico, he is left hanging because the other cops in the department feel that if a cop won’t take money, then he of course would turn in cops who do. But of course, it isn’t black-and-white. Washington is not all bad, Crowe is not all good, which of course happens in any great movie. And a lot of bad ones.

What really sets American Gangster apart, aside from the fantastic actors doing fantastic acting, is the style. Ridley Scott has managed to make some of the most visually appealing movies in history. (Check out his early work, like The Duellists, or Alien). Sometimes that goes off the rails and the movie suffers for the stylish makeup - think Hannibal, or Black Hawk Down. But in American Gangster, Scott seems to treat the whole movie almost like a period piece. Of all his movies, this one feels the most like The Duellists, both in it’s theme and it’s style. It moves along at a crackling pace on the backs of Washington and Crowe, and although it runs more than two and a half hours, you never have a sense of the time passing. Tremendously engaging and fantastically done.