From Macau to Yuma
An eastern western and a western western both deliver the goods
By Andy Klein
It's been a lean three decades or so for the western, which for even more decades was Hollywood's busiest genre. So what are the odds we'd get two westerns opening in one week? Even more amazingly, two really terrific westerns? But here they are: Exiled and 3:10 to Yuma.
Okay, admittedly, the second of these is set in Macau in 1998 (a year before the colony was due to return to Chinese rule) and centers on Asian guys wearing trench coats rather than Anglos wearing boots. But, outside of that, this latest from ace Hong Kong director Johnnie To draws its inspiration from the conventions and techniques of the western. From Anthony Mann to Akira Kurosawa to Sergio Leone to Sam Peckinpah to John Woo and beyond, the symbiotic influence of westerns, samurai films, and gangster movies (east and west) has enriched film culture on both sides of various oceans.
In the case of Exiled, the connections are more blatant than usual. The long opening sequence is almost surely patterned on the beginning of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West: Blaze (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, not to be confused with the Australian Anthony Wong, who was in the last two Matrix films) and Fat (Lam Suet) have staked out an apartment building, waiting for the arrival of Wo (Nick Cheung), whom they have been ordered to kill. While they're there, Tai (Francis Ng) and Cat (Roy Cheung) show up to stop them.
Though the sequence is almost entirely without dialogue, these two duos converse just long enough to let us know that they and Wo are all childhood friends and former comrades in the mob of Boss Fay (Simon Yam Tat-Wah). Wo tried to kill the boss and had to flee the colony; now he's returned to set up housekeeping with his wife, Jin (Josie Ho), and their infant son. Boss Fay has, not unreasonably, demanded that Wo be killed; Blaze and Fat aren't really keen on bumping off their old friend, but an order is an order.
When Wo finally arrives, a spectacular gun battle erupts, until the assassins decide that the honorable thing is to join forces with Wo and the others long enough to pull off a quick job that will provide for Jin and the baby after Wo's dead. Suddenly, hilariously, with a truce declared, the men who were raining Wo with bullets moments before are now helping him move furniture.
Blaze is still committed to killing Wo after the job, but, in the course of setting up the job, they all run afoul of Boss Fay. And, every time they escape him, they manage to bump into him again. The number of times the two sides cross paths may seem unrealistic ... unless you've been to Macau, the main part of which is a peninsula roughly a quarter of the size of Manhattan, with a width that varies from almost two miles to well under a half-mile. It would be more amazing if they didn't keep running into each other.
A few months ago I was praising To's two "triad election" movies, but Exiled is a leap past them, possibly the best work the prolific filmmaker has done. In addition to the masterful blend of humor and action, there is the kind of genuine emotional content that is altogether lacking in, for example, Shoot 'em Up (see Latest Reviews), an American knockoff of Hong Kong action that also opens this week. Near the end, Blaze has to decide whether to do the right thing, even though he knows it means certain death. It's another scene that seems directly referential, this time to the contemplative moment near the end of The Wild Bunch, where William Holden's Pike has to make a similar decision.
On top of everything else, Exiled is the most beautifully shot movie so far this year. The cinematography by Cheng Siu-Keung is breathtaking; during a shootout in a sleazy doctor's office, the lighting provides the texture of a Rembrandt.
If Exiled is a Western in almost every sense of the word, 3:10 to Yuma requires no qualification at all. Director James Mangold has remade Delmer Daves's minor classic of 50 years ago, with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale stepping into the roles first assayed by Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. I expend a lot of words in these pages, perforce, trashing stupid, pointless remakes, so let it be said loud and clear: In almost every respect, Mangold's new version is superior to the original.
Crowe plays notorious gang leader Ben Wade, who is captured immediately after successfully holding up a stagecoach ... killing the driver in the process. Since the rest of Wade's crew will unquestionably try to free him, it's imperative to get him transported to the town of Contention, where the 3:10 train will take him straight to Yuma prison. Southern Pacific Railroad exec Butterfield (Dallas Roberts) offers $200 to anyone who will take on this dangerous assignment.
Volunteering is Dan Evans (Bale), a one-legged Civil War vet who needs the money to save his ranch from creditors ... and to earn back the respect of his teenage son (Logan Lerman). Together with Butterfield, a fanatical Pinkerton guard (Peter Fonda), the town "doctor" (Alan Tudyk), and a few others, Evans escorts Wade toward Contention, pursued by Wade's gang and hassled along the way by a variety of others.
The original 3:10 to Yuma - one of the earliest screen adaptations of Elmore Leonard - is often compared to High Noon, but the similarities are shallow. The center of 3:10 to Yuma (in both versions) is the relationship between Wade and Evans, with the outlaw toying with the rancher in a cat-and-mouse game, sometimes trying to make him angry enough to make a slip, other times trying to corrupt him with bribes.
The interplay between the two men is more complex and layered this time around, in part thanks to Mangold, but also because Crowe is a better actor than Ford. (Bale vs. Heflin is a closer call.) This improvement also has a down side, however. In the first version, Wade's motivations toward the end were hard to believe; this is a problem in the basic conception of the story. Because the second version gives us more realistic characters throughout, this issue may seem more glaringly evident, even though Mangold, his screenwriters, and Crowe all make admirable attempts at ameliorating it.
Ben Foster makes a definite impression in (formerly) Richard Jaeckel's role of Wade's second-in-command. His weaselly evil feels over the top, but he also adds a tiny, interesting edge of homoeroticism to his love for his boss. As the doctor, Tudyk - who was handily the best thing in Frank Oz's recent Death at a Funeral - is a standout among the altogether fine cast.
After weeks of lousy releases, what's heartening about Exiled and 3:10 to Yuma is the way To and Mangold artfully modernize conventions that may seem antiquated, while preserving the qualities that made them conventions in the first place. Both films provide the sorts of movie-movie pleasures we get far too few of these days.
Published: 09/06/2007
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