3:10 to Yuma

Section: Discovery of America
Directed by: James Mangold


United States, 2007

Dir.: James Mangold
Scr.: Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt, Derek Haas (based on the short story by Elmore Leonard)
Operatőr/Phot.: Phedon Papamichael
Editor: Michael McCusker
Music: Marco Beltrami
Cast: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda
Format: 35 mm; Color
122 mins
www.310toyumathefilm.com
Distributor in Hungary: Intersonic

Arizona, late 19th century. Dan Evans is a small-time rancher struggling to keep afloat. There has been a bad drought and he is in debt. He is consumed with guilt over his failure to provide for his wife, Alice, and two young sons, Will and Mark. Legendary outlaw Ben Wade and his gang hold up the Butterfield stagecoach, witnessed by Dan and his sons. Later in town, Wade is arrested. Pinkerton detectives and bounty hunters plan to take him across country to catch the 3.10 train to Yuma that will deliver him to prison. Evans agrees to accompany Wade to the train in return for a payment of $200 that he hopes will save his ranch. But Wade's gang learns about the plan to take their boss to the Yuma train.

“In the case of westerns, my feelings is that they are a kind of fever dream of America and they are a mythology. They are American yearnings and fears, angst and quests laid out in a kind of really beautifully barren and pure landscape that allows these themes to resonate in ways that they can’t in other settings. The only other world that I think has this kind of resonance is actually the American mob movie. That has a kind of similar code of conduct and genre, a kind of dance which allows similar kinds of moral questions to be asked. Which is why when I made Cop Land I named Stallone’s character, Freddy Heflin, after Van Heflin and very much inspired by 3:10 to Yuma and there’s a hell of a lot of 3:10 to Yuma in Cop Land.” (James Mangold)

See also:
	Body/Antibody		Half Nelson
	In the Valley of Elah		Loren Cass
	Rescue Dawn		Shotgun Stories