Thursday, October 18, 2007

WORST. ENDING. EVER

3:10 to Yuma. No spoilers.

Obviously with no spoilers, this post can't go too far. The movie was beautifully shot and quite good up until the craptacular cinematical climax. And this isn't my American sensitivities speaking...it's not about good or bad winning or losing...it was just stupid. I'll have to read the original short story by Elmore Leonard to see if the story has always had this fucked up ending.

It's a shame, because I did like the film, up to that point.

Just an interesting aside: I watched The Magnificent Seven the other day and the lead, Yul Brynner, was sporting a significant Russian accent...in 1960!! But come 2007, we have to an Aussie fake an American accent in the lead. What gives? I was thinking about it and I don't think that foreign accents would have been that strange in the West during the late 19th and early 20th century. What with all the immigrants moving West to strike it rich.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So I just won't watch the end

Jeff K said...

Think of the time you'd save by just leaving with 15 minutes left!

From what I've read, while the ending bears little resemblance to either, it's closer to the Elmore Leonard short story than the original 1957 movie. Although I'd still like to see it, word of this ending has prevented me from doing so.

Like every M. Night Shamalamalmalamamamalamayan movie that has a "twist" ending, maybe they assumed this would help generate "buzz" and get those people who wouldn't normally see a Western into the theater. This time of buzz seems to have a negative effect on me, though. I also read that Elmore Leonard won't make any money off of this movie, so I would suggest you go buy one of his books if you like the author's works.

BTW, James Mangold is no stranger to the "twist" ending; just take a moment to read some commentary concerning "Identity" (2003) and its polarizing plot contrivances.

Kris said...

I'm not going to say that it ruined the movie, 'cause it didn't, but I just found it to be the archetypical "we don't want to make a normal ending" movie. And in many ways it is...I'm not going to spoil it, because I know that Jeff hasn't seen it, but for me it a cliché "let's do something different" movie.

Still, Christian Bale is a great actor (who definitely has a "Western face"), Peter Fonda very good and for all his womanizing and anger-management issues, Rusty Crow isn't too shabby either.