3:10 to Yuma, On Track?
A look at the remake released 50 years later, and an interview with Elmore Leonard.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 09/02/2007
Everybody wants to make a Western. It’s a fact. Few directors of note, if you were to ask them, would say, “I’m not interested in Westerns; I have my heart set on another slasher movie or romantic comedy.”
What holds them back is the idea that Westerns don’t do well at the box office. Yet Westerns are one of those toy chests everybody wants to open. Actors, directors, writers—males for the most part—all want to play with the figures inside the box.
The Western formulas are, to the naked eye, pretty simple. The truth is, good Westerns are extremely rare and hard to make, which is why it makes sense that James Mangold has been wanting to remake 3:10 to Yuma for years.
It’s got everything: action, tension, interesting characters and gunplay. Elmore Leonard, who wrote the original story, didn’t waste words. This is not a Western that requires much historical background. It features a bad guy, a good guy, a hotel room and a passel of villains in the street below.
The story is what I think of as a “siege” Western. Like High Noon, Hombre (which Leonard also wrote) and Rio Bravo, it locks a handful of characters in a box and then shakes the box to see what kind of rattle they make.
When director Delmer Daves turned Leonard’s story into a movie in 1957, he and the writers made a few modifications. The good guy deputy who is simply doing his job, was changed into a failing rancher with a family he can’t feed. Dan Evans (Van Heflin, echoing his character from Shane) just happens to be on the spot when he sees a gang of bandits rob a stage and kill a man.
Post A Comment