MovieChat Forums > 3:10 to Yuma (2007) Discussion > Great acting but MOVIE TURNED STUPID AT....

Great acting but MOVIE TURNED STUPID AT....


Bale and Crowe, superb acting as always.

But the movie got real stupid and lost all credibility at the mining camp.
Wade is killing everyone off one by one and they still want to help him get to contention?

When the good guys started killing the good guys at the mining camp, this movie became stupid. They should just let him get fried and pay $200 for him. Instead the good guys kill the good guys to get a bad guy who keeps killing them.

STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID.

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I just to make it clear that Crow and Bale and the acting + character development was SUPERB. But what I mean is, the movie was stupid in that it's so illogical and unrealistic. They could have killed Wade at the beginning...and it wouldn't be murder or breaking the law....it would have been self-defense...Wade was killing them one by one!!!! How can anyone say that "if lawmen break the law, then there is no law". That's BS. Wade was killing them one by one and killing Wade would not be breaking the Law.

It was also stupid how the gang bribes the entire town by saying $200 to anyone who kills Dan and the crew??? Then all the townspeople who know Wade is a criminal, decides to load up their guns and start killing innocent men for $200??? Why wouldn't the sheriff or anyone else just up the bid to $300 to kill Wade's men?

The townspeople outnumbered wade's gang like 50 to 1. All they had to do was kill wade's men and take the $200 if they wanted lol.

Then the sheriff and his men decide to walk outside put their guns down hands up and they get killed execution style! LMAO.


Anyways...great acting...loved it...but soooooooo many stupid things about this movie.

I do appreciate the moral transformation and idea of trying to bring back honor in the changing of Wade's character (his compassion to help Dan look good in front of his kid...).

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I just watched this movie for the first time last nite and, yeah, I gotta agree there were just too many stupidities going on with it that I just couldn't like it even with two fine actors like Crowe and Bale. Hollywood amazes me in that there can be movies with such a massive budgets for actors and effects and then totally ignore that the story just isn't there.

Everyone gets everything he wants.

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way too stupid agreed, from dave jenkins:

It's even stupider than that. The gang rides into town and sets up under the hotel window from which five armed men are overwatching. The gang are murderers, wanted men, known to law enforcement officers. The men in the hotel room include three peace officers. They have every legal and moral right to open up on the gang as soon as they appear. They also have the advantage of higher ground. No additional advantage can be gained by delaying. It is the height of idiocy that the men in the hotel room don't immediately start firing on the gang below! Further, even if they were to delay, the moment the gang starts offering the 200 dollar bounty the lawmen would begin firing just to shut the men up and discourage takers. But the men in the hotel room are completely passive. Yet this is just one stupidity in a sequence of hundreds in this stupid movie.

Equally stupid things happen on the trail from the farm to Contention. The group leaves at night, under cover of darkness. Presumably, speed and concealment are the two things the party is most concerned with. In the very next scene, however, we see them lounging about by a campfire. Why have they stopped? They want to make time, and they should want to do it in the dark. Also, stopping means having to put a watch on Wade while the others sleep. For some reason, Wade is allowed freedom of movement throughout the night (his manacled hands aren't much inconvenienced). Then, only one man is left to watch the notorious killer (a union rule?). In the morning, the watchman is dead. Incredibly, the men just write him off and proceed with their journey! All psychological plausibility goes out of the movie at that point. If you are traveling with a murderer, and he murders one of your company, you just don't continue on with the status quo ante. You reassess the situation. In the present case, you realize that getting the guy to Yuma may not be do-able, that even with your full crew it was gonna be tough, but now with one man short it is likely impossible. The guy who decided Wade had to go to Yuma (and who is bankrolling the expedition) is along, and therefore should call an audible. Even if he doesn't, the rest of the crew should prevail upon him to change the terms of the expedition. They should realize that all their lives are likely forfeit if Wade continues to live. They should do the rational thing: kill Wade on the spot.

Instead, they go merrily on their way, allowing Wade to kill again. Even then the group doesn't learn.

Then there is the "shortcut" through the pass, which we are told is controlled by hostile Indians. This shortcut requires another night and another campfire. What the *beep*

Then there's the stupid digression with the mining camp. What the *beep*

Finally, reaching Contention, more stupidities abound, as cited above (but not exhaustively. It would take 2 pages of text to enumerate all the idiotic things that occur there).

The original film was not flawless. It had great style and a good set-up, but the story turned stupid at the end. One problem was with the basic concept: waiting for a train. If you are traveling with a prisoner, the only reason to take him to a hotel is to conceal him. The moment his whereabouts is known, the hotel is a liability. You have enormous blind spots in a hotel room, and your mobility is compromised. Also, getting the guy from the hotel to the depot is something of a problem (as we see). Better to forget the hotel and go straight to the depot. Who cares if there aren't enough chairs for everyone, at least you have clear fields of fire in all directions.

But why wait for the train at all? Such a tactic fixes you in place, and allows the gang to catch up. A more prudent course would be to ride up the line toward the oncoming train and hail it as it approaches. You keep ahead of the outlaws, and then gain an earlier speed advantage. Also, why not use the telegraph and call for reinforcements? Maybe Contention is a worthless town, but why wouldn't there be towns up and down the line where reliable helpers could be recruited? Why not contact the army? They too have an interest in seeing Wade and his gang brought to justice.

If you do a remake of a film, you should set out to improve on the original. In the case of 3:10, a serious revision in the plot was called for. The remakers not only didn't fix the old problems, they created hundreds more. I'm really disappointed that they didn't adopt the obvious solution: put the good guys on the train early, and then have Wade's gang try to stop it. A running train battle would have been cool. The most important thing, though, would have been to have characters acting like rational beings, not pawns in a stupid plot. This remake gets 1/5, as do all stupid films.

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No real argument in the criticism of the storyline. The revisionist and the director were going for characterization over plot.

However, I must take issue with the OP's description of "the good guys killing the good guys" in the mining camp. There were precious few good guys in this entire movie, and those guys running the mining camp were definitely not any of them. They killed the Chinese woman, and probably the child, firing into a tent at a guy they were assuming was Ben Wade on the basis of what? The color of his jacket? And they were perfectly willing to murder Dan Evans, his 14-year-old son, Doc Potter, and a railroad guy they know at least by name, for the sake of torturing Wade to death. Not good guys in my book.




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Yeah agreed.
I never got the whole sleeping in the open by a fire in a place where they should hide, not back cuffing Wade, turning on the mining guys instead of taking on wade's group together, etc..

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I tried watching it when it released, and lost interest during a scene with horses and a stage coach, and I think a minigun.

It was stupid and I lasted about 5 or 10 minutes. Haven't been back since.

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Thank you for being one of the very few people on this board who actually makes any sense.It seems like everyone else is just way too blind with morality.

You want to play the game, you'd better know the rules, love.
-Harry Callahan

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Great post. Those were all the things that bothered me about the film, even though i did enjoy a lot of the other aspects. Another thing that bothered me was how they sent two guys as decoys who obviously would get captured and locked one up and also told him the plan so that the bad guys didn't even have to try hard to get the info out if him. It seemed like the whole movie they kept on sending a small amount if guys to get slaughtered by Ben wade's men instead of just sending a size able group that actually stood a chance. I liked your suggestions on how they could have improved the script. A battle on the train would have made more sense and also have been more exciting.

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It's about money dude, just in life, money and pride to say they brought Wade in.

I can't think of something that will make you remember my quote.

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Yeah it's a shame because the performances were great all round.

Many things annoyed but especially:

- 1st campfire where he isn't tied up and stabs the guy. Just absurdly stupid.

- 2nd campfire while in hostile Indian territory.. So you are sneaking through Indian territory, let's LIGHT A FIRE!

It's just lazy writing, lazy production and/or lazy direction. How is it possible that no one saw these logicial inconsistencies.

It wouldn't have taken much to fix these issues either. At the first camp fire they could have tied him to a tree but he manages to get the fork out and cut the rope, then the guy notices and he stabs him (or he just stabs him for fun because he is a bad man, and someone notices).

It was an "ok" film but should have been a great one.

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agreed

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Heh. mgt is certainly a world class hater. As in obsessed needs to get a life why spend so much time hating? hater.

I assume I have no reason to take him off ignore, either.

Moving along here...

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Heh. kenny-164 is certainly a world class lover of dreck. As in obsessed needs to get a life why spend so much time loving crap?

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There are good films that have one or two scenes are poorly written and/or staged. This film has that in spades.

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Agreed. This movie started out real promising but it just jept getting retarded as time went by.

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