3:10 to Yuma

Viewed: Theater

I love Westerns. I love the shoot outs, I love the horse riding, I love the dress, I love the wide outdoor scenes. But I also love all of those things to be wrapped up in a good and logical story. Unfortunately, this movie fails in the story logic.

The whole series of events starts because the bad guys let the rancher and his boys live when they witness the stage robbery. The bad guys murder (murder) the Pinkerton agents who survive the stage wreck (except for one, who they just gut shot for sadistic pleasure), but they let the rancher who witnessed it all go free and alive? The whole first 30 minutes of the movie is to establish just how evil, ruthless, and uncaring these bad guys are, but they show uncharacteristic benevolence to let the rancher go. Of course, had they not let the rancher go, the movie would not have a protagonist.

There are many other logic-defying scenarios throughout the movie that just keep me from liking this movie.

The posse (including the rancher) taking Ben Wade, the self-admitted evil murderer, in hand shackles, let him sit at the dinner table right next to the rancher’s youngest son and his wife—and he’s eating with a long, sharp object. He uses that exact object to kill a man later in the movie.

After Ben Wade kills two of his captors, while still shackled, the posse doesn’t execute him on the spot. They have the chance to kill Ben’s terribly evil second in command, numerous times, yet they don’t do it. The second in command is able to go round up his scattered and in hiding gang to rescue their boss in less time than it takes the posse to escort Ben two days ride. The Apache attack is laughable. Just problem after problem—I haven’t mentioned them all.

The plot and story in this movie just relies on so much stupidity and ineptitude on the part of the heroes/posse that it actually angers me. I don’t expect heroes (or villains) to always do the smartest or most logical things—sometimes people do something stupid, especially when they are rushed or in danger—but when the whole story relies on continuous dumb decisions or scenarios, it’s just bad writing.

There are plenty of movies where the hero only survives and succeeds because the bad guys have to be stupid, but this is a movie where the story keeps going only because the good guys have to be stupid.

There is no extra scene at the end of the credits.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com