Just another whistle stop

Confronted by dubious visuals or fishy situations, “That’s so fake!” has been a common cry from those oddballs who demand ‘realism’ from the fabricated world of movies. If anything, it inspires screenwriters to double check their facts and prompts effects teams to tweak their gadgetry. Yet here we are in the year 2008 and Peter Fonda takes a bullet to the gut at point blank range. A veterinarian removes it with dirty tweezers and no anesthetic in a filthy room. And a few hours later, Peter’s back on his horse with no pain, no infection or any ill side effects, ready to deliver a criminal to justice.

    C’est la cinéma. New on DVD, James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) is a longish and mildly entertaining remake of a slightly more compact but generally unexceptional western made in 1957, and both of them are derived from an Elmore Leonard story that I’ve never read. The older film starred Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, two actors who were a bit softer than, say, Robert Mitchum or Randolph Scott. This new film stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, two actors more gruff than most of the current crop of toned and polished Pink Boys. The appearance of Fonda is nostalgic: initially unrecognizable until his voice registers, he was coming of age in Hollywood while the ‘57 version was rolling and surely knew Ford and Heflin off the lot.

    There isn’t enough meat on this new film to get enthused about; forty years ago a smart producer would’ve hacked off thirty minutes from its bloated two hours and sold it as a b picture. Crowe and Bale are good, but the script and James Mangold’s direction fail to grasp the menace and tension in an otherwise unavoidably tense situation. On top of that, I wondered why few (if any) of the old west characters were rolling their own or smoking. I wondered why Bale’s son went unpunished for being a sullen brat and disrespectful to his elders. And I wondered why Fonda was able to bounce around on a horse immediately following a makeshift surgery. And all I could think was, “That’s so fake!”