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Spoiler Points for 3:10 to Yuma (2007) [R] 117 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $14.50
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer
Click to read the non-spoiler review
The film opens with the desperate night time raid and barn burning of Dan Evans's property. Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a small time rancher has gotten behind in his payments on the land due to extraordinary family expenses and reduced worth of his herd due to a diversion of water that used to run through is property by a land owner up stream (who just also happens to hold the note on his land). Young son, William (Logan Lerman) is also nearly killed trying to salvage horses and saddles from the burning barn. He looks at his father with contempt when he pulls him back just as the roof collapses. The next day, father and sons need to round up the cattle that fled the scene during the fire. On their journey they encounter the wrath of the renegade and America's most wanted outlaw, Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) staging the robbery of an armed stagecoach carrying railroad earnings. Despite the heavy protection for the coach and well-trained crew, they are not match for the cunning of Wade and his gang. The coach is upturned and eventually blown open with the loot put in saddlebags divided among the men. Most of the are killed including one of Wade's own men by his hand who failed in his duty to ensure the coach was free of additional guards costing the gang one of its other members. Left to die is Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda), a long-time nemesis of Wade, and all of this in front of Evans and his sons. Turns out, part of Wade's improvisation in stopping the coach included stirring cattle into its oncoming path. When Wade and his men spot Evans, Evans approaches and asks for his cattle back. With a smile and a chuckle, Wade surrenders the cattle, but states he must take their horses to ensure his getaway. He says he'll leave them in the next town for him to pick up by the side of the road. There is a surprising degree of honor to the ruthless outlaw.
Disheartened and ashamed, Evans and the boys return home where Evans finally accepts he has to take a family heirloom to town for money so that he can pay the money he owes on his land.
Meanwhile, Wade's gang arrives in the town of Bisbee, with Ben's sidekick Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) getting the role of convincing the Marshall that the Railroad stage coach has been hit by outlaws outside of town. Railroad representative, Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts), convinces the Marshall and his men to ride out to assess the situation, only to find the money gone and a barely alive Byron.
With the law out of town, Wade and his men drink it up at the saloon, until Wade notices the bartender, Emmy Nelson (Vinessa Shaw) is an old flame of his from Leadville where she used to be a singer.
Evans arrives in time to let the Marshall and Butterfield know that the assault was the work of Ben Wade and that he had headed to Bisbee. Realizing they were horns waggled by Charlie Prince, they ride back to town with an injured Byron and Evans in tow. Back in town, some quick thinking hatches a plan to catch Wade. Evans distracts him in the saloon with talk of repayment for his lost time and cattle that were killed in the onslaught. Wade coughs up money only to turn around into the pistol of the Marshall who arrests him. The plan now will be to take Wade to Contention City and put him on the next prison train to Yuma at 3:10 the day after tomorrow. The plan will only work, however, if they can misdirect Wade's gang. Butterfield offers up a bunch of money, including $200 for Evans, if they will help him get Wade on the train. The men agree, and they put him in a coach and head off to a spot near Evans's ranch. There, the coach gets stuck, and during the fixing of the coach, they swap out Wade for a look-a-like and his actual cowboy had. The coach heads off, but Wade is to stay the night under watch at the home of the Evans—against the better judgment of Alice Evans (Gretchen Mol). Uncomfortable dinner table banter occurs as Wade tries to prove himself the gentlemen endearing himself to both Alice and the Evans boys. Young William, especially, finds him captivating. The next day, they head out on horseback in hopes that their coach-misdirection plan works. Along the way, one by one, the escorts numbers dwindle with Wade killing the Marshall at campfire with a fork for singing too much and Byron gets tossed off a cliff the next day for talking trash about his mother. Wade all but would have escaped at this point were it not, however, for the fact that William rarely did what his father ordered, and he followed the group eventually helping to recapture him. The next day's journey prompts the discovery that Wade's men have caught on to the stagecoach ruse and are now after them. Again Wade escapes, but this time he's caught by a group of miners making railroad tunnels. Turns out that Wade killed the brother of one of the leaders of the operation. They seize him, string him up, and plan to electrocute him before he dies. Fortunately for him, the men arrive on foot, spot their horses, and end up working with Wade to rescue him and escape. During the getaway, however, they lose the Doc Potter (Alan Tudyk) leaving the escort party a tad thin and making Dan Evans grateful that his son, William, disobeyed him and followed along.
They finally arrive in Contention City, and check into the hotel slipping into the bridal suite virtually unnoticed. Butterfield hires the local Marshall and some of his men to help in the escorting of Wade to the train station. Evans stays with Wade training his gun on him at all times while William is assigned the role of lookout to provide warning if Wade's men approach town. In the interim, Wade opens up to Evans and the eventually offers him $400 and then $1000 to let him go. As much as this sum of money would change his family's life forever for the better, he resists the temptation preferring his integrity and $200 to Wade's $1000 and a life of regrets. As 3 o'clock approaches, so does Wade's gang now led by Charlie Prince (Ben Foster).
Charlie is signaled by the bartender that Wade is in the room above. Quickly, he offers several hundred dollars bounty on the heads of each member of Butterfield's party that is shot. This causes the Marshall and his men to drop out of their willingness to help escort Wade leaving the job up to Evans, his son, and Butterfield. IN one last psychological test, Wade alerts Evans to the idea that even Butterfield is going to bail on him. Which turns out to be true. He returns to the room to give Dan his $200, but to relieve him of all obligations. But, Dan is too proud, and he uses this to make an even better deal with Butterfield. For enough money to protect his family and ranch forever, he agrees to get Wade on the train by himself. He wants Butterfield to hole up in the room across the hall with his son and wait it out. Butterfield is all too eager to oblige. Then at the stroke of 3 o'clock, Evans decides it's time to hit the road. He gets Wade up and they head out the back way. Shooting guy after guy, they finally and suspensefully make it to the train station, but not until a lot of people die. Once inside the ticket office, Evans holds of Wade's gang and William decides to leave to help his father. At 3:10, the train is no where in sight given Charlie a chance to get closer to the ticket office to free his boss. He doesn't know that William is about to spring a trap of his own. The train arrives, William stirs up the cattle which then go on to trample Charlie, and Dan Evans gets Ben Wade on the prison car as required. As he turns though, he is met by the sight of a trampled Charlie who cannot hear his boss yell, "No…" as he fires bullet after bullet in to Dan's chest. Ben hops back off the train, shoots Charlie and his other men, looks longingly at William as if to say he's sorry, and then surrenders to the prison train guards. It's a stunning turn of events, but through the course of the film, Wade grows a conscience even saying once he never intended to do a good thing because it might feel too good he'd have to do it again. He also notes a comment in which William says to him, "I know you're not all bad."
In another heart-to-heart moment, Dan Evans reveals to Wade that he's not the war hero he's told his sons, that actually his injury was inflicted by friendly fire, but that's not the kind of story that will win you the love and adoration of one's sons. Likewise, Ben shares that he, as a young boy, was abandoned by his mother. She gave him the Bible, and told him to read it. He sat there for three days, but she never came back for him.
Clearly, the loving relationships between father and son and father and family, had a heavy impact on Ben Wade. Indeed, whether Dan would admit it or deny it, the two men bonded and were indeed friends by the end. Ultimately, Ben respected what and whom Dan was for his family, envied it even, especially the loyalty of a son that ran far greater than the depths of adoration in his own gang. At the end, he shows not only that he has a heart, but that it's capable, finally, of great sacrifice for others as well, for he knows now that Dan is dead, the railroad money for his capture is the only way to keep Dan's family alive and to save the ranch in his now permanent absence. He also knows that the only way to keep his men from coming after him and attempting additional rescues is to kill them too, thus beginning a cycle of justice and remorse.
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