3:10 to Yuma review

The wife and I watched 3:10 to Yuma tonight. Rarely does a movie build me up as much and then leave me feeling so unsatisfied. Despite being a bit over 2 hours, the movie flashed by quickly. It starts a little slow but after that it does a good job hitting you with suspense every few minutes. It doesn't overdo it, there's just enough action.

With all that said, you'd think I would agree with the very high 88% rating that the film received on Rotten Tomatoes. But...I don't. If you pushed me into making a binary decision, I guess I'd give it a thumbsup, I guess...but just barely. The story was just too surreal. This is a movie about real life! It turns on the moral dimension of one of the main characters...you have to give me something, anything to make me believe! I want to believe! But I couldn't. I didn't feel it when the scene happened, I just sat there saying, "that's so Hollywood." And analyzing the movie later, I see where the filmmakers tried to stick things in to make us believe it was possible. But not only did I viscerally reject it, intellectually I still think they didn't make their case.

I did spend a few minutes wondering if that was Gretchen Mol in the movie, and finally decided that if the actress wasn't Gretchen Mol 10 years after Rounders, it looked exactly like she would look.