10 Things I Hate about "3:10 to Yuma"

I thought I’d put a few thoughts down about the western '3.10 to Yuma', starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Apart from some exceptional acting by the pair as the bounce their contrasting styles off each other, the camera work is quite average and the pace of the film is disjointed. In fact, the acting is so good that for most of the film you forget how silly the story is until you get to the final scene where it all becomes too much.

Having watched a lot of TV as a child and teenager, I recall there are some cardinal rules in westerns that might have been forgotten when writing the script for this picture

1. Don’t light fires at night if you have a posse of bad guys chasing you.
2. Don’t light fires at night in Apache territory.
3. Don’t sit by the fire while aforementioned angry Apache’s are firing rifles at you.
4. It is standard practice to tie bad-guys hands behind their back so they can’t punch, strangle, knife you, or grab your gun.
5. It is also standard practice to tie bad-guys to a tree or some immovable object while you’re sleeping so they can’t kill you, get away or, heaven forbid, maybe even both.
6. People with wooden legs usually walk with a limp. Usually.
7. People with wooden legs can’t run that well. Most of the time.
8. People with wooden legs definitely can’t run over the tops of buildings and jump of roofs. Ever.
9. Bad guys really don’t care if your 14 year old son likes you
10. Bad guys really don’t want to get on a train to prison when they can be riding high to the border with $10 grand in stolen railway money. Even if they do care about your son’s need for a respectable male role model