3:10 to Yuma (No poker content)

I love westerns. The Clint Eastwood Spaghetti westerns, Lonesome Dove, The Searchers with John Wayne, Jeremiah Johnson, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to name just a few. I was really excited when Mrs. Wolverine and I went to the cinema the other day to see the Russell Crowe movie “3:10 to Yuma”. This was a remake of the 1957 film of the same name starring Glenn Ford. Both movies were based on the short story “3:10 to Yuma” by Elmore Leonard. I rate the move a 5 out of 10 as it was barely good and they included way too many harrowing experiences and too many shoot outs to liven up this flick. Plus, it was nothing like the short story.

I read the short story by Elmore Leonard and the story is about 1/10th of the movie, mostly the end. The start and middle portions of the movie have nothing to do with the book but were made up the by the screen writers.

It could have been one of the best westerns since Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”. All they had to do was concentrate on the gist of the story and to have some realistic shoot-outs, not the glorified Hollywood shoot’em ups where they fire their double barrel shotgun 3 times before reloading.

Why does Hollywood do that? Why are movies like “Unforgiven” or “The Usual Suspects” so few and far between? Doesn’t Hollywood realize that sometimes “Less is more”?