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A solid five out of ten....you've seen most of it before: hard luck cattle rancher (Bale) is desperate to save his land from the railroad so he signs on to take a super desperado (Crowe) to a prison train headed for Yuma. Never mind that Crowe's gang is composed of homicidal psychos hell bent on freeing him at any cost of human lives. Yep, lots of killing and fighting along the way to the train and a few unique twists at the end of the story.
The cinematography didn't seem particularly interesting and the dialogue was less than scintillating. The end credits were really "cheap" so I think this film didn't have a major budget despite its stars.
Peter Fonda is almost unrecognizable and Luke Wilson cameos as a less than moral deputy. I perked up when Vinnesa Shaw appeared on screen but, unlike "Eyes Wide Shut", we only see a bared shoulder.
I'm not too enthused over this film...the theater was loaded up with boomer types and we got our violence quota so I suppose it served its purpose.
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Complicit Constapo Talibangelical since MMIII
Follow Ups:
...my daughter and I saw it and we really liked it.But then I'm a Boomer who grew up with westerns.
I'd give it 7 out of 10 up until the last 5 minutes where it fell apart.
Personally, I liked it more than "The Propostion", which left me cold, and "The Missing", which I enjoyed.
good. Hell, he just shot up his own gang, didn't he?
One can just see Russell's agent arguing he CAN'T be truly evil. And so, this ridiculously plotted, acted, and staged farce descends into camp but without the humor or self-awareness.
The worst touch may have been the pretty little blue-eyed teenager who had the gravitas of a Disney boy actor. His "toughness" was as convincing as Angelina Jolie's (come to think of it, Angie scrares the hell out of me sometimes).
Michael should have Baled. He's not much of an actor, anyhow. He's on screen for probably one hour and a half and doesn't manage one memorable line, movement, or ANYTHING.
After "Unforgiven," the bar was raised. This Western, unfortunately, takes us back twenty years in this genre.
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Complicit Constapo Talibangelical since MMIII
From a visual standpoint this wasn't exactly a John Ford picture, but at least the movie was technically well-done. It's the ending that really didn't work for me. It's not as if the characters weren't carefully drawn or developed in a failed script or that the acting was substandard (it certainly wasn't) and Bale and Crowe weren't able to properly convey their characters to the viewer. It's just that the actions in the final 30 minutes defied all known patterns of human behavior - rational or otherwise. Not that I didn't have a lot of problems with some of the peculiar actions, reactions, and motivations in the first hour and a half. But once they got to that hotel room it was as if they entered some strange parallel universe of the human psyche. It was a totally unconvincing resolution to an average Western.
was rather peculiar and unsatisfying.
Still, that doesn't take away from the "ride" this movie took me on. This is certainly the best Western in quite some time, which isn't saying much, since Westerns as a genre have fallen into disuse/disfavor. But it was much better, IMO, than Costner's Open Range.
The desert southwest was beautifully filmed . . . my wife watched the final credits in detail and said it was shot in New Mexico?
Now hoping that we get a second credible Western in "The Assassination of Jessie James by the coward. . .", can we say unwieldly lonnnnng title?
..
I understand your point. As an "Australian" western, it had a different "gallop" (pacing?) to it. It was a movie I admired more than enjoyed. Fairly brutal toward the end.
The other movie one should consider in this discussion is "The Missing," the Ron Howard directed movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett. This movie showed some early promise, but its descent into "supernatural mojo crap" (hereafter SMC!) by the Indian medicineman/sorcerer pretty much ruined it for me.
a solid A. And that's because it has the best actor working in movies today. No, not Ms. Spears.
RW.
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