Towards Mecca

Ok, so it’s been almost a month since my last (and first) post but I honestly simply forgot I had a blog I’m not sure if that actually makes things any better or worse but it’s the truth so tough! Well onto the review…

I’d like to start by saying that I’m not particularly a ‘Westerns’ fan. I don’t dislike Westerns but I don’t go gaga over them either. That said, I really like both Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as actors so I really did want to like this movie going into it. The last good Western I’ve seen was Unforgiven and that was over a decade and a half ago, I thought it was time for another good one.

3:10 to Yuma had a better than average start. I sympathized with the characters almost immediately and was genuinely interested in their decisions and outcomes. Both Bale’s and Crowe’s characters were intriguing in their own way and the story didn’t strike me as the usual, predictable, cookie-cutter Hollywood quick-cash maker. Even at the half-way mark, I was very absorbed by the plot and could not decide what outcome I thought would befall the duo.

[SPOILER WARNING]

Sadly, the movie ended in a totally uninspired and ridiculously unbelievable “bad guy turns good” scenario that had a self-proclaimed rotten ruthless killer surrendering himself to the authorities symbolically after cold-heartedly and single-handedly killing his own posse, and this, after they had rescued him. Then, to top it all off, there was an even more ridiculous hint at a possible escape in the end that just left my head spinning!

It’s not that I don’t understand what was meant by it all. Wade (Crowe’s character) wanted to show William that his father (Bale) was a Hero. I understand that. This is something that a decent person would definitely WANT to do but would surely NOT have risked his life and limb for. Especially seeing as how the ‘Hero’ in question despises you, wants to see you brought to justice, is a complete stranger, can offer no rewards in terms of money or power, and isn’t even a possible love-interest (since Crowe’s character was obviously very straight).

Ironically, I believe that if this movie had a more typical Hollywood ‘good guy kills bad-guy and gets the girl’ ending instead of this nonsense, I might have actually considered it to be worth a rental for its setting and acting alone. I might have even settled for a less-typical ‘good guy dies and son gets revenge’ ending. As it stands, I don’t understand at what point someone thought this ending would actually be a good idea.

[/END SPOILER]

All in all, avoid this movie unless you don’t plan on watching the ending because of time constraints or Attention Deficit Disorder or whatever other reason you can come up with….