3:10 to Yuma

Saw this last night. Three really good performances--Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, and Ben Foster. Crowe, usually Mr. Intense, plays a bad guy with charisma and humor, so lightly that when his visciousness surfaces it's shocking (even the second or third time...you keep starting to like him and then--WHAM). Bale (upon whom I have had an unrequited crush since, omigod, Empire of the Sun, when he was just a kid) is the intense one: a guy so trod on by fortune that all he can do is go inward; his family's in several different kinds of trouble, and he doesn't confide in anyone, just keeps tucking it away inside so that the people around him think he's a milksop. And Ben Foster plays Crowe's second in command with a kind of loony homoerotic visciousness that is really really scary. The three of them are fabulous, and their supporting players are good too (Peter Fonda! Alan Tudyk!). The look 'n feel of the thing is terrific. I had problems with one costume (the barmaid in the opening scenes--either you're a whore, and wear your dress cut down that low, or you're not, and you don't. The damned dress seemed to be trying to have it both ways, and all through the film I'd keep coming back to it in my mind. Yes, I know: demented, that's me).

And I had some real problems with the ending, which doesn't quite work for me. There are things you see coming (I defy anyone who's seen Firefly not to know what's going to happen to Doc Potter--and when) and things that don't seem to connect.

Good looking, pretty entertaining, not entirely satisfying. But there's Christian Bale, so it's all good.