You are quite correct, Chris, about the hotel room situation--it was too dangerous to be a wise decision, but then look at another movie that did MUCH better at handling the exact same situation:
Last Train from Gun Hill. The scenes where Kirk Douglas has to get his wife's killer out of the hotel room and down to the station are exceedingly well done and clever---I was expecting something along those lines and instead got to see the remarkable exploits of a man with a wooden leg LEAPING ACROSS ROOFTOPS. Wasn't that the monkey wrench Cary Grant threw into the police inspector's story when they tried to pin the "cat burlaries" on a peg-leg in To Catch a Thief?
Anyway, here are some of my other snappish remarks on this remake, and I beg pardon of anyone who really liked this movie:
"I saw 3:10 to Yuma last night---the remake, that is. My review is don't bother, rent the original instead. I wasn't a fan of the original before but now I am just in reaction to this mishap. I don't know why people are giving it such good reviews. Well, Crowe is good, he's the only think really worthwhile in the whole unbelievable mess. Close-up, after close-up after close-up....it nearly drove me out of theater. There was not one moment of tension or suspense in the entire film. So I blame terrible direction plus the 14 year old son of Christian Bale's character needed a good pistol whipping from someone---he kept cursing all the time, in his parents' house, in front of his mother and they didn't punish him! In those days that kid wouldn't have been able to sit for a week if he'd gotten potty-mouthed in front of his mother like that. I can't tell you how much that bothered me, and his whole disrespectful attitude toward his father."
Another thing I disliked about it:
everyone, with the sole exception of Christian Bale's character and his family were portrayed as, at best, venal and generally criminal, vicious, psychotic, and dangerous. I mean entire towns were portrayed this way---mine workers, farmer, Indians, townfolk, Everyone! Basically, the director is saying everyone out west in those days was absolute trash who'd shoot you down for a quarter. That is rubbish---what about all the decent, honest, hardworking people who just wanted a new start in life---I think they vastly outnumbered the scavengers and it bothers me that "revisionist" ideas in westerns for the past 30 years try to paint everyone who settled the west as a vicious outcast. That is simply untrue and frankly, not very interesting from a storytelling point of view.
Look at how High Noon, for instance, presents a similar circumstance: supposedly only one man is standing up for what is right. But that doesn't mean that everyone in the town was ready to sell out to Frank Miller and gun down Marshall Kane, does it? That is how they would show it today. They were scared, they had gotten soft and comfortable but it would be unrealistic to show them all suddenly turning into murderers. That's what they did in Yuma. It was like the west suddenly became Sodom and Gomorrah...."
"I think they were trying hard to pander to a teenage male audience---there are virtually no real love scenes (thank heavens no nudity) but I haven't even mentioned to you....how much blood and gore there was---it made
Gladiator look tame. It was so unnecessary too---like one scene where the animal vet operates on a Pinkerton agent that Russell shot in the stomach---they show EVERYTHING, all the gore and I had my face averted for about 1/4 of the film due to scenes like that. Totally gratuitous and in the most juvenile fashion. "
"I believe the more restrained handling of these shooting scenes [in older westerns] gave the filmmaker a chance to show the IMPACT of a death....in Yuma there was only ONE instance, in about 200 shooting deaths, where the director chose to give a few lousy seconds to absorbing the impact of one man's dying. It is sickening to do otherwise."
"We really need to send these directors to school, to John Ford, Howard Hawks, Delmer Daves, and Anthony Mann 101."
END OF RANT
