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My wife and I took our very first trip out West this past summer, spending time in small, quaint towns like Kemmerer, Wyoming while being mesmerized by the whole beauty of the landscape. It is not an understatement to say that one’s senses are not fully prepared for the barrage and the weight of the sheer vastness of the place. More than once, I remembered thinking about the fortitude and kind of person it took to settle the land out there. I knew I could never watch another (decent) Western movie again with the same eyes. I simply just don’t naturally gravitate toward the Western. I’ll watch the high profile flicks with the names I know, but, unless one is a die-hard fan, I’ll whimsically presume most people do the same. The large-scale selection of the Western in recent history is a bit scant- at least those that aren’t pointless blood-spillers that gorge on the shoot-em-ups. There is enough lead flying here, but Yuma revisits some interesting moral codes that were standard in the golden era of the Western film, albeit with some graded variation and characterizations. Yuma is a welcome addition and we’ll see if it garners follow-ups in the genre. Rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a man perched on one-too-many brinks of failure; his ranch is destitute and dry, as are his finances, his family and the prospects of retaining his manhood in the eyes of family and community. Having trudged out to Arizona with one good leg sacrificed to the Civil War, the family seems taxed with a burden similar to Russell Crowe’s Braddock in Cinderella Man. The entire situation is teeming with portentious catastrophe, with Indians, drought, wandering lawlessness and the general struggle just to survive. Barn-burning cronies of Evans’ debtor incite the father and his two boys out the next morning to seek honest retribution, and in so doing, happen across Ben Wade (Crowe) and his gang robbing a wagon and ruthlessly chugging burning lead into the outgunned coach-drivers. The initial interchange between Wade and Evans stakes a marker of morality in their relationship upon which the film rides. Evans is unquestionably the upstanding one here, but the viewer is left to ponder the display of a promise kept to Evans on Wade’s behalf in light of the evils he has just committed. Would the story use this element of Wade’s Bible-quoting, devotion-demanding, quasi-approachability to fashion a greater morality tale or balk, confusing the lines between good and bad and turn the need for some resolution and restitution upon us? Those days didn’t seem to me to afford men and women the luxury of time to finagle rightness versus wrongness, good guys and bad guys as we are wont to do now. At least the old Westerns don’t seem to portray that with all the time it takes to stay alive on the front. In this way, the Western is a good lean-to in an era of moral ambiguity, chartering themes of family, hard work, responsibility, sin and redemption in a backdrop so obviously as lending as the wild west is. Yuma grants such an affability to Wade to primarily magnify what can be confusing contrasts between the power of choice in light of what should be quintessentially obvious choices. Each scene cascades into the other with palpable depth in these choices the characters have to make while illuminating how each choice is contingent upon the other. No choice is made that does not (negatively or positively) affect another. So when Evans chooses to join a rag-tag band of escorts to haul the captured Wade to Contention for a 3:10 train to Yuma, he does so out of semi-self-serving purposes. Or does he? With the $200 he is promised for delivery, he could provide for his family but he’s also leaving them unprotected. So the relational journey is the story and it’s as wide ranging as the desert colors and the swings of weather. The prospects of Wade’s and Evans’ mere presence before each other threaten them enough that a friendship can only be formed under such circumstances. But the friendship is not along the path of least resistance, wherein they share interests or hobbies. It is formed under the duress of life or death circumstances and each character must sacrifice a bit of themselves to “learn” the other person. These are the most enthralling scenes (such as the scene where the two are locked in a hotel room), where real relational risk to know and be known are laid out to chance with no proper return or compensation. Much to the standard Western type-scene, there is a determining shoot-out, not at high noon of course. The resolution, if it can be called that, is worthwhile because of what it took to get there. The surrounding characters help to round out the pace with some one-liners that do not wear out their welcome (i.e., the writers did not try to carry the dialogue with them, which is cheap fare if overused). Peter Fonda’s Byron McElroy, a bounty hunter more intent on his cut for the price on Wade’s head, winds up on the table of a Doc Potter (Alan Tudyk) after the aforementioned robbery with a slug in his gut thanks to Wade’s gang. Doc Potter digs and hastily removes the bullet with a clank in the metal container. McElroy, the epitome of Western toughness, having already refused to be held down for his own good to endure the pain, looks disdainfully at the animal pictures hanging around the room and asks: “Just what kind of doctor are you?” To which, the Doc replies, “It’s just good to talk to a patient for a change.” Ben Foster’s Charlie Prince establishes the most obvious case for the reflexive, heartless killer- the bad guy without a hope. He does that well enough to elicit perhaps some pity in the end. But does Prince really get what he deserves? I saw Bale in an interview in which he stated his intrepidation about working with Crowe, Director James Mangold (Walk The Line, 2005) took to remaking Delmer Daves’ 1957 version of the same name with some more gratifying twists to the two main characters. Wade is not just a cold merciless killer and Evans just isn’t an unquestionable do-gooder. These nuances assigned to them help to maneuver the film beyond the straightest moral lines and allows for doubt and real struggle. Interestingly, according to IMDb’s trivia page for the film, Tom Cruise was Mangold’s first choice for Wade. It could have worked, but I’m glad that idea rode out of town. For me, Crowe accesses a greater range and depth as an actor and seems a better face for the wild west.
picture courtesy LionsGate filmsComments |
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