3:10 To Yuma (1957), 3:10 To Yuma (2007)

Years ago a friend of mine suggested that I should do a joint review of these two movies, and for whatever reason I kept putting off viewing them, well that was my mistake as both films turned out to be very strong. Both are based on Elmore Leonard's 1953 short story Three-Ten to Yuma, this was back during the period in which the author specialized in westerns, though today he's better known for his crime fiction. Like other movies and TV series I could name based on Leonard's work, these two film adaptions of Three-Ten are dramatically juicy, action packed yet cerebral, and contain some of the best dammed dialogue produced by anybody.

The plot of Three-Ten is a simple one, and iconically western, but its thoroughly thought through and has unusual depth for the genera. I find this particularly true of the original cinematic rendering, which I think compares favorably with High Noon, one of the most iconic westerns of all time. This 1957 version stars Glenn Ford and Van Heflin as the two leads, well known actors both but not generally considered A list stars, and certainly past their prime at the time this picture was made. This works for the film because the audience isn't distracted by star power, and makes their performances all the more unexpectedly revelatory. Ford plays Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw and gang leader in post civil war Arizona, at the start of the film he is in the midst of  holding up  a stage containing passengers and a good chunk of money belonging to a railroad company his group has been targeting lately (it's not expressly stated in this film, though it is in the later, that much of the railroad in Arizona is still being built at this point, hence the use of the stage). Van Heflin is Dan Evans, a struggling cattle ranch in immediate danger of losing his land (the immediacy of this is much more expressly conveyed in the 2007 remake). Evans cattle have gotten away from him and were obstructing passage of the stage at the point that Wade and his men overtook it. Evans and his boys watch from a distance as the stage is robbed, in no practical position to do anything to stop it (this lack of action none the less annoys his older (roughly 12 year old) son, which again is a much bigger plot point in the remake).

Evans and his children as spotted by the gang, Wade speaks to them and decides to leave them alone once he determines that all they want is to retrieve their cattle, he does take the Evans's horses however, so they won't run to town and shout a warning too soon, though he promises to leave them tied up nearby, which he does. The stage coaches horses have either been scattered or killed by Wades gang so the Evans, once determining most everyone from the wagon is okay, save on man that was murdered, take the railroads representative Mr. Butterfield (Robert Ernhardt) to has ranch, and from there to town to get help for the stranded passengers etc.

Meanwhile Wade and his men (there's probably about 8 or so of them) make for the nearby town of Bisbee. They pretend to be a team on its way to a cattle round up and even inform the local authorities they saw a stage being robbed on their way into town, so the sheriff quickly rounds up a posse to go out and help the survivors and see if they can catch the culprits, unaware of course that the culprits themselves are the ones who reported the crime. Wade's group has some beer, then decide to split up for safety and reconvene later, Wade stays behind to seduce the comely bar made (Felica Farr), there is some really, though tastefully done sensuality to this, and its very clearly conveyed that the two end up having sex, nothings shown of course, but I felt that this was handled in an unusually straight forward way for a movie of this time. Because he stays in town for so long Wade is eventually captured, though his right hand man Charles Prince (Richard Jaeckel), who I guess had come back for Wade, see's this happen and hightails it out to gather the gang to effect their leaders rescue.

Mr. Butterfiled, the Sherriff, etc. determine the best course of action is to take Wade to Contention City and get him on the titular train to Yuma due the next day. The risk involved in this transaction make most of the townsfolk reluctant to get involved, but when Mr. Butterfield offers $200 to anyone who will assist, Evans volunteers and that amount of money should be enough to see his ranch through until the rains come and save his property from being reposed.

Due to the shear amount of plot I'm going to have to switch to Wikiepdia for the summery (major spoilers):

"Wade is placed on a stagecoach, which then stops (in view of some of the gang) for a faked repair; the outlaw is secretly taken off while the stage continues on with an imposter, in the hopes that by the time the outlaws figure out what has happened, it will be too late. Wade is taken to Dan's ranch, where Dan's devoted wife Alice (Leora Dana) serves supper to the family and their "guest".

Dan, Alex (the town drunk and the other volunteer to transport Wade) and Wade leave under cover of darkness, reaching Contention City at daybreak. Butterfield has reserved the bridal suite at the hotel. While they wait for the train, Wade tries several times to bribe Dan into letting him go, his interest in Dan seeming to go beyond a simple exchange of freedom for cash. Dan is greatly tempted. The local sheriff is out of town, but Butterfield hires five men to help escort the prisoner to the train.

Things go awry when Bob Moons (Sheridan Comerate) barges in unexpectedly and threatens to shoot his brother's killer. Dan wrestles his gun away from him, but in the struggle, it goes off. Downstairs, Charlie Prince (Richard Jaeckel), who has also come to Contention City, hears the gunshot, and spots Wade in a window. Charlie is seen riding off to fetch the rest of the gang.

The men Butterfield recruited watch as seven riders enter the town. Not liking the odds, they retreat, leaving only Dan, Alex and Butterfield. When Alex goes out to reconnoiter, he spots one of Wade's men on a rooftop opposite the hotel. Alex calls out, warning Dan, but is shot in the back by Prince. The gang hangs the wounded Alex from the lobby chandelier, killing him. Butterfield decides that maintaining Wade as a prisoner is not worth the risk, and releases Dan from his obligation. Alice arrives and also tries to change her husband's mind, but he is committed: "The town drunk gave his life because he believed that people should be able to live in decency and peace together. You think I can do less?"

When the clock strikes three, Dan escorts Wade out the back door. Gang members take shots whenever they can without endangering Wade, but despite their best efforts, they cannot stop the pair from reaching the platform, where the train is waiting. Finally, the outlaws emerge to confront Dan as the train starts to leave. Charlie shouts for Wade to drop to allow them a clear shot at Dan. Instead, Wade unexpectedly tells Dan to jump into the passing baggage car. They jump together. The gang starts to run after the train, but Dan shoots Charlie and the rest then let it go. Wade explains himself, saying he felt he owed Dan for protecting him from Bob Moons in the hotel room, and confidently claiming he has broken out of the Yuma jail before (implying he can do so again), but whether these statements reflect his true motivations and prospects is not clear. Alice sees Dan safe on the train as rain pours down on her, breaking the long drought."

This is all presented in a crisp black and white, in a barren background, the tension between these two central characters as they feel each other out, take a measure of one another's characters, is amazingly done. How Wade comes to have such deep respect for Evans that in the end he will even risk his own life to help the man bring him to jail, where they are going to want to hang him, its such a powerful thing and so very well executed. Ford and Heflin give two of their finest performances, and director Delmer Davis is at top form. This movie deserves to be considered part of the top rank of western films for its period and beyond.

It's all just such great stuff that no wonder it was remade. The 2007 remake directed by James Mangold is strong in its own right, but for me, and this could all just be because I saw this version second, it lakes the subtle awe that dawned on me as I watch the original. Mangold takes the basic story of the original and expands it some, as I've not read the original short story both films are based on I don't know how much of these additions come from the original text, and how many are unique to the latter screenplay. There is more backstory presented in this remake, a couple additional characters, and an entire new acts worth of material in the middle as they take Wade to Contention City, also the endings different. The leads this time are Russell Crowe as Wade and Christian Bale as Evans, interestingly both non-American actors, and both much bigger stars then there predecessors in these parts, these two do bring star power to the proceedings, but as both are known for there ability to act, not just shout catch phrases, this actually works in the films favor. Grittier then the original this film does a fine job of drawing out the way Wade and Evans feel each other out through the proceedings, and Russell Crowe's Wade is more of a basterd then Glenn Ford's Wade, but they both work.

It's a gritty, rough, contemporary felling western, though it still has one foot strongly rooted in the mythic realm. The latter 3:10 to Yuma is still great filmmaking, and my only reservation being that seeing this version first might make modern audiences less appreciative to the exquisite subtleties of its predecessors. So I strongly recommend seeing both films in order, they are both worth your time.

1957 version: ****
2007 version: ***1/2

Evil Dead (2013)

Another remake of another film I have not seen, in this case Sam Raimi's classic cult horror film Evil Dead. The original Evil Dead made good use of its star Bruce Campbell (essentially starting his career) and a limited budget to create a film with a great reputation among genera aficionados. This remake try's to pump what it can from its limited setting and cast, basically five people in a cabin in the woods, but with a greater effects budget. Unfortunately the end product is dull, lacking a single character interesting enough to draw you in. The characters are boring, the violence excessive, the point lost. In the end this movie is something you just sit through and then ask yourself why you bothered. Not even an interesting failure, though technically competent this Evil Dead  doesn't offer the viewer anything worth experiencing, the  worst movie I've seen in a while. *1/2

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

Loose remake of the 1976 John Carpenter film of the same title, which admittedly I haven't seen. The film concerns Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) an officer traumatized by the death of two associates under his command eight months prior, now its New Years Eve and Roenick along with a small skeleton staff is overseeing the last day of operations of the titular Precinct 13, a police stations in a sparsely populated part of Detroit that is being shuttered due to budget cuts. Roenick is visited by a police psychologist played by Maria Bello who wants to help the officer truly cope with his earlier trauma, plus the two like to flirt. In addition at the precinct there is a grizzled veteran cop played appropriately by Brian Dennehy and a "sexy secretary" played by Drea de Matteo.

A convenient snow storm forces a bus conducting a convenient prisoner transfer to stop and temporarily unload their inmate cargo at Precinct 13 until the storm blows over. Conveniently among them is crime lord Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) who has just been conveniently arrested and is likely to turn on his erstwhile corrupt cop associates lead by Gabriel Byrne once he meets with the state prosecutor. Byrne and his men are pretty motivated not to let said meeting happen and so they conduct and assault on Precinct 13 to prevent it. Bishop eventually explains to Roenick what this whole siege is really about and the two join forces to defend the precinct with a mixture of police officers, civilians and criminals awkwardly joining together in an effort to save there lives.

This is a pretty good set up, and I like these kinds of 'Alamo-type' 'ragtag band is hopelessly outnumbered' kind of stories, so for me you'd have to be pretty incompetent to mess a film like this up, and fortunately director Jean-Francois Richet is not incompetent, though he really hasn't done much with his career. The cast is solid, they don't have to stretch much for these proceedings, so they can carry the film with little effort. Nothing really exceptional about the film, but there are no major flaws except maybe a little bit towards the end. There are plenty of clichéd 'surprises' but they are forgivable. A quite watchable bit of action. **1/2

Black Swan (2010)

I'm a late comer to this film, which somehow has managed to remain mostly unspoiled for me prior to finally watching it last week. Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her work here, an honor she very much earned. She plays such an obsessed, and tightly wound character, a virginal, repressed lesbian who is losing her mind (come to think of it all Darren Aronofosky films are about characters who are slowly losing their  minds, to one extent or the other). Portman plays Nina Sayers, a working ballerina at  a prestigious New York company who at 28 has never been cast as a lead, her talented but slightly lecherous director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel, very good) takes a risk at casting her as the lead in his new production of the much done Swan Lake. Leroy wants to get more out of Sayers performance then she's ever been able to give before, and given her frightened, reserved nature it seems impossible that she will be able to play the erotically tinged part of the Black Swan in the ballet, though as Cassel notes her playing the dual part of the virginal White Swan, will not be a problem for her.

All this stress doesn't help the perfectionist Sayers, whose suffering some undiagnosed mental issues, including paranoia. She has a love/hate obsession with a new ballerina in the company played by Mila Kunis (good in a rare serious part), and as the film progresses her obsessions, a number of them, grow greater, and her mind starts playing tricks on here. The mental descent of Ms. Sayers is done wonderfully well, its truly unsettling and creepy. This owes mostly to Ms. Portman's remarkable performance in the part, but is aided as well by visual effects, sometimes subtly done, that aid in conveying the characters sense of things coming unhinged. As we are seeing things through Nina's eyes in the film sometimes we'll see things that turn out to be hallucinations, but we can't be sure if what we are seeing is really happening or not until later events in the film either confirm or deny that they really took place.

Director Aronofosky has taken elements from the story of Swan Lake and overlade them on the story of characters mounting a production of Swan Lake, and he's done so in such a way as to create a supremely well crafted piece of psychological horror that is utterly riveting and inventive. This movie left me feeling truly awed.. ****

The Great Moment (1944)

Writer/director Preston Sturges had the odd idea to make a bio-pic about Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, the 19th Century American dentist who pioneered the use of ether based anesthetic as a pain killer during surgery. This odd idea resulted in an odd movie, a bio-pic that's part comedy, and part earnest championing of a man who Sturges felt got a raw deal from history. Joel McCrea plays Dr. Morton, he's not a great actor but he was a favorite of Sturges and gets down the earnestness combined with indignation of his part satisfactorily. The story its self is intriguing, though not one that particularly lends its self to a film treatment, Sturges even goes so far as to put selections from books that Morton is reading up on the screen, a fairly clever way of communicating kind of dry information to the audience. Mediocre as a bio-pic, and for the most part lame as comedy, with the great William Demarest (another Sturges favorite) providing most of the laughs, "It was the night of September 30th, and I was in excruciating pain..." The final film was evidently edited by the studio in a manner not keeping wit  Sturgeses intent, so maybe a directors cut of the film would have been better, though sometimes Sturges was his own worst enemy when it came to overloading his films. In the end The Great Moment is an odd curio, which has a couple of good moments, but on the whole never came together for me. **

Village of the Damnd (1960)

The original screen adaptation of the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by author John Wyndham, he of Day of the Triffids fame. The first 10-15 minutes of this movie is some of the most atmospheric, creepy, and down right intriguing horror film making I've ever seen, and the set up even pays off, which doesn't always happen.

"All of the inhabitants (including the animals) of the British village of Midwich suddenly fall unconscious, and anyone entering the village also loses consciousness. The military arrives and establishes a cordon. The military send in a man wearing a gas mask, but he too falls unconscious and is pulled back by a safety rope. The man awakens and reported that he had experienced a cold sensation just before he passed out. The pilot of a passing civilian plane is contacted and requested to investigate. When he goes below 5,000 feet, he loses consciousness, and the plane crashes. A five mile exclusion zone around the village is established for all aircraft. At nearly that very moment, the villagers regain consciousness, seeming otherwise unaffected. The incident is referred to as a "time-out," and no cause is determined.

About two months later, all women and girls of childbearing age who were in the affected area are discovered to be pregnant, sparking many accusations of infidelity and premarital sex. The accusations fade as the extraordinary nature of the pregnancies is discovered, with seven-month fetuses appearing after only five months. All the women give birth on the same day, and their children's unusual appearance is remarked upon: They have "unusual," "arresting" eyes, odd scalp hair construction and color (pale blond, almost white), and unusually narrow fingernails. As they grow and develop at a rapid rate, it becomes clear that they also have a powerful telepathic bond with one another. They can tell each other anything that they see from great distances. As one learns something, so do the others."- Wikipedia.

Creepy huh, and the implications of this, the stuff we don't see on screen, is creeper still, turns out this isn't the only village this happened too. George Sanders, the only 'star' in the film plays Professor Gordon Zellaby, the village resident who comes closest to understanding what is going on. Sanders is  good as always and gets to be kind of the hero of the film, which outside of the Saint franchise wasn't something he got to be very often. I highly recommend this movie, it's a must for fans of horror, both phantasmagorical and psychological. ***

Donnie Brasco (1997)

"The  film is based on the true story of Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI undercover agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in New York City during the 1970s, under the alias Donnie Brasco, aka, "The Jewel Man". Brasco maneuvers his way into the confidence of an aging hit-man, Lefty Ruggiero, who vouches for him. As Donnie moves deeper into the Mafia, he realizes that not only is he crossing the line between federal agent and criminal, but also leading his friend Lefty to an almost certain death."-Wikipedia.

At first I felt that I'd seen enough Mafia expose movies, but this grew on me until by the end I was really liking it. It helps that its based on an interesting true story, and stars the likes of Johnny Depp (who uncharacteristically underplays his part to effect) as the FBI agent and Al "Crime Movie Legend" Pacino as Lefty. Also if you've read this blog you know I love close to anything with a gritty 1970's backdrop. ***1/2

Jeopardy (1953)

Director John Sturges, who would later make such legendary suspense/adventure pieces as Bad Day at Black Rock, The Magnificent Seven, and The Great Escape, manages to get about everything you could out of this simple, modestly budgeted, and surprising unrushed race-against-the-clock film. Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Lee Aaker are an American family on vacation in Mexico's Baja peninsula, Barry gets pinned down by some heavy wood from a decaying pier on an isolated beach, and with high tide coming to swallow the poor fellow Stanwyck is forced to leave young Lee to tend her husband while she rushes to find help in a sparsely populated land were she doesn't even speak the language. A seeming bit of luck doesn't pan out when the lone American she encounters (Ralph Meeker) turns out to be an escaped fugitive wanted by Mexican authorities (the film never bothers to give us any backstory on how Meeker ended up jailed in Mexico and how he escaped). Meeker wants to keep Stanwyck as a hostage and use her car to hightail it to a not well thought out conception of safety. Barbara only has a mater of hours to convince her captor not only to return her to the beach where she came from, but to then help save her husbands life once there, which of course in the end is what happens, and predictably just in the nick of time of. Sadly forgettable, I recommend instead a far better film from the same year with a  surprisingly similar plot, (instead of an American woman held hostage by an American fugitive  in Baja Mexico while on vacation, its two American men held hostage by an American fugitive in Baja Mexico while on a hunting trip), the Ida Lupino directed suspense drama The Hitch-Hiker. Jeopardy gets only  **

Into the Storm (2014)

Basically its Twister plus 18 years, so now everybody has a camera and the special effects are better. Fairly standard and predictable type plot, but well executed, this film actually produced for me a couple of moments of visual aw, which its hard to do anymore so big kudos on that. The cast is basically unknown, with Sarah Wayne Callies being the only one I found instantly recognizable. This movie is worth seeing on a big screen, its the visual punch that puts the thing over. Film benefits from restrained ambition so, it makes sure that what it does do it does well, and its gets it pacing down to just about perfect. For me, the big surprise of the summer. ***