Malos sobrados
"3.10 to Yuma"
James Mangold, 2007
Reparto: Russell Crowe (Ben Wade), Christian Bale (Dan Evans), Logan Lerman (William Evans), Ben Foster (Charlie Prince), Peter Fonda (Byron McElroy), Vinessa Shaw (Emma Nelson), Alan Tudyk (Doc Potter), Luce Rains (Weathers), Gretchen Mol (Alice Evans), Dallas Roberts (Grayson Butterfield).
Guión: Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt y Derek Haas; basado en un relato corto de Elmore Leonard.
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El chériff de un pueblo atrapa al cabecilla de una banda de asaltantes y se propone llevarlo a Contention para entregarlo en el tren de las 3.10 a la penitenciaria de Yuma. Christian Bale interpreta a un ranchero que no puede pagar sus deudas por la sequía y se une a la escolta para conseguir los $200 que necesita.
Son cuatro hombres para escoltar a un forajido. Pero resultan ser pocos porque Ben Wade, el malo, las tiene todas consigo.
Los malos tienen unos lazos entre sí irrompibles que les hará rescatar a su jefe pase lo que pase. Los malos también tienen la codicia del pueblo que está dispuesto a ponerse de su lado por un poco de dinero. La ley tiene de su parte a unos funcionarios poco convencidos y, además, llenos de debilidades.
Si el protagonista opta por uno u otro bando es una decisión cuyo fondo se me escapa por completo. Casi todo lo que consigue el granjero lo consigue gracias a su enemigo. Hacía falta un Russell Crowe para encarnar a este bandolero complejo. El malo va tan sobrado en esta película que la única oportunidad que tiene la ley está en su conciencia.
Roberto Piorno. Guía del Ocio ****: El clímax de la película matriz dejaba que desear (primero por su muy improbable resolución y segundo por un barniz cristiano como aliño francamente empalagoso), Mangold lima las puntas del desenlace pero la guinda sigue mal puesta. Es el único defecto grueso que puntúa la extraordinaria entidad del revival.
Jordi Costa. El País: La historia es la misma, pero las diferentes estrategias estilísticas colocan su acento en lugares distintos; mientras Delmer Daves describe la construcción de un héroe como la dolorosa y sostenida resistencia ante la seducción del mal, Mangold convierte la simbólica habitación en antesala de una redención simultánea, en el espacio donde el héroe y su reverso se descubren como únicos interlocutores válidos. En la película de Daves el nacimiento del héroe tiene un poder transformador -sobre su antagonista y sobre la naturaleza misma-. En la de Mangold, el heroísmo es, como su contrario, una forma de autodestrucción. O el camino más tortuoso hacia la inmortalidad.
Tras ver El tren de las 3.10 el espectador quizás se reafirme en la convicción de que, en la era del simulacro digital, el western es el género menos capacitado para mentir. Mangold también lo reivindica como uno de los últimos refugios para la épica moral.
Mr Cranky: What a lot of people don't understand about the Western genre is that they're about man love. Okay, they aren't about chocolate dog, dark tunnel serenade, sweaty testicle sacks smacking wetly against hairy rear ends man love, but they are about man love all the same.
"3:10 to Yuma" is about man love alright. Famous criminal Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and down-on-his-luck farmer Dan Evans (Christian Bale) sure enough love each other. Then there's Wade's right-hand man Ben Foster (Charlie Prince) who worships Wade to the edge of ejaculatory glee. Oh yes he does.
Then there's the less graphic man love between Evans and his son, William (Logan Lerman). Dan wants his boy to respect him and to understand the love a boy should have for his father. It's Dan's need for that man love and respect that drives "3:10 to Yuma". Not only does Dan need William to love him, but he needs Ben to love him and those two loves are tied together. Hell, man love is so important in this film that man's love for women and vice versa is all but dismissed. Dan's one, intimate conversation with his wife (Gretchen Mol), involves him lamenting the fact that she doesn't look at him as a wife should anymore. In her eyes, he's saying, he's less than a man.
All this manliness questioning comes about because Dan has one leg and because bad guys are threatening to run him off his land. You see, Dan was shot in the Civil War and can't seem to stop the inevitable eviction, which makes his son think of him as a coward. So when the opportunity to escort the famous Wade to a prison train comes about, Dan jumps at the chance to prove himself despite the danger.
From there, "3:10 to Yuma" is a lot more like some kind of camp fire chat then it is a Western. Dan and Ben get to know each other and realize that each has something the other wants. Ben has manliness. Dan has normalcy. That the final shoot-out is preceded by Dan and Ben spending a few hours chatting in the bridal suite of a local hotel is no accident. They are, in fact, perfect for each other. Together, they make a whole man. I was shocked that during their conversation Dan didn't say to Ben "you complete me".
Roger Ebert: Both Dan and Ben have elements in their characters that come under test in this adventure. Dan fears he has lost the confidence of wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and teenage son Will (Logan Lerman), who doubt he can make the ranch work. Still less does Alice see why her transplanted Eastern husband should risk his life as a volunteer. The son Will, who has practically memorized dime novels about Ben Wade, idealizes he outlaw, and when Dan realizes the boy has followed the posse, he is not pleased. Wade intuits, however, that the boy is following him, and not his father.
That's an insight into Wade. He plays his persona like a performance. He draws, reads, philosophizes, is incomparably smarter than the scum in his gang. Having spent untold time living on the run with them, he may actually find it refreshing to spend time with Dan, even as his captive. Eventually the two men end up in a room in the Contention hotel, overlooking the street, in earshot of the train whistle, surrounded outside by armed men who want to rescue Ben or kill him.
Mangold's version is better still than the 1957 original, because it has better actors with more thought behind their dialogue. Christian Bale plays not simply a noble hero, but a man who has avoided such risks as he now takes and is almost at a loss to explain why he is bringing a killer to justice, except that having been mistreated and feeling unable to provide for his family, he is fed up and here he takes his stand. Crowe, however, plays not merely a merciless killer, although he is that, too, but a man also capable of surprising himself. He is too intelligent to have only one standard behavior which must fit all situations, and is perhaps bored of having that expected of him.
RT | IMDB | muchocine
Jordi Costa. El País: La historia es la misma, pero las diferentes estrategias estilísticas colocan su acento en lugares distintos; mientras Delmer Daves describe la construcción de un héroe como la dolorosa y sostenida resistencia ante la seducción del mal, Mangold convierte la simbólica habitación en antesala de una redención simultánea, en el espacio donde el héroe y su reverso se descubren como únicos interlocutores válidos. En la película de Daves el nacimiento del héroe tiene un poder transformador -sobre su antagonista y sobre la naturaleza misma-. En la de Mangold, el heroísmo es, como su contrario, una forma de autodestrucción. O el camino más tortuoso hacia la inmortalidad.
Tras ver El tren de las 3.10 el espectador quizás se reafirme en la convicción de que, en la era del simulacro digital, el western es el género menos capacitado para mentir. Mangold también lo reivindica como uno de los últimos refugios para la épica moral.
Mr Cranky: What a lot of people don't understand about the Western genre is that they're about man love. Okay, they aren't about chocolate dog, dark tunnel serenade, sweaty testicle sacks smacking wetly against hairy rear ends man love, but they are about man love all the same.
"3:10 to Yuma" is about man love alright. Famous criminal Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and down-on-his-luck farmer Dan Evans (Christian Bale) sure enough love each other. Then there's Wade's right-hand man Ben Foster (Charlie Prince) who worships Wade to the edge of ejaculatory glee. Oh yes he does.
Then there's the less graphic man love between Evans and his son, William (Logan Lerman). Dan wants his boy to respect him and to understand the love a boy should have for his father. It's Dan's need for that man love and respect that drives "3:10 to Yuma". Not only does Dan need William to love him, but he needs Ben to love him and those two loves are tied together. Hell, man love is so important in this film that man's love for women and vice versa is all but dismissed. Dan's one, intimate conversation with his wife (Gretchen Mol), involves him lamenting the fact that she doesn't look at him as a wife should anymore. In her eyes, he's saying, he's less than a man.
All this manliness questioning comes about because Dan has one leg and because bad guys are threatening to run him off his land. You see, Dan was shot in the Civil War and can't seem to stop the inevitable eviction, which makes his son think of him as a coward. So when the opportunity to escort the famous Wade to a prison train comes about, Dan jumps at the chance to prove himself despite the danger.
From there, "3:10 to Yuma" is a lot more like some kind of camp fire chat then it is a Western. Dan and Ben get to know each other and realize that each has something the other wants. Ben has manliness. Dan has normalcy. That the final shoot-out is preceded by Dan and Ben spending a few hours chatting in the bridal suite of a local hotel is no accident. They are, in fact, perfect for each other. Together, they make a whole man. I was shocked that during their conversation Dan didn't say to Ben "you complete me".
Roger Ebert: Both Dan and Ben have elements in their characters that come under test in this adventure. Dan fears he has lost the confidence of wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and teenage son Will (Logan Lerman), who doubt he can make the ranch work. Still less does Alice see why her transplanted Eastern husband should risk his life as a volunteer. The son Will, who has practically memorized dime novels about Ben Wade, idealizes he outlaw, and when Dan realizes the boy has followed the posse, he is not pleased. Wade intuits, however, that the boy is following him, and not his father.
That's an insight into Wade. He plays his persona like a performance. He draws, reads, philosophizes, is incomparably smarter than the scum in his gang. Having spent untold time living on the run with them, he may actually find it refreshing to spend time with Dan, even as his captive. Eventually the two men end up in a room in the Contention hotel, overlooking the street, in earshot of the train whistle, surrounded outside by armed men who want to rescue Ben or kill him.
Mangold's version is better still than the 1957 original, because it has better actors with more thought behind their dialogue. Christian Bale plays not simply a noble hero, but a man who has avoided such risks as he now takes and is almost at a loss to explain why he is bringing a killer to justice, except that having been mistreated and feeling unable to provide for his family, he is fed up and here he takes his stand. Crowe, however, plays not merely a merciless killer, although he is that, too, but a man also capable of surprising himself. He is too intelligent to have only one standard behavior which must fit all situations, and is perhaps bored of having that expected of him.
RT | IMDB | muchocine
3 comentarios:
Christian Bale últimamente está por todas partes.
José, tienes razón, el final no hay quien se lo crea pero eso no quita que sea un más que digno western, no?
Por cierto, me gusta mucho el nuevo look de tu blog!
Saludos
Bale salía en Batman, en El Prestigio, y el año que viene en Terminator. No le hace ascos a nada.
Me alegro que a tí te haya gustado, Marcelo. A mi no del todo. Quizá por eso me ensaño con el final.
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