Hot take warning spoilers ahead
There Will Be Blood is commonly lamented as a classic, a slow-burn Western drama with a timeless performance from Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview. On the other end of the spectrum, we have fellow 2007 Western action flick 3:10 to Yuma, a movie that has undoubtedly received significant praise, but has gone on to be relatively overshadowed in the grand scheme of cinema in comparison to TWBB. Allow me to pitch a hot ball from left field.
Despite common perception, I believe that 3:10 is vastly the superior movie. The two films, despite sharing the common theme of being Westerners, are largely different from one another. 3:10 is more of a popcorn, edge-of-your-seat spagooti Western. TWBB, on the other hand, is a slowly developing character drama with a large emphasis on the small number of close-knit characters and their interactions as Daniel Plainview uses them to pursue corporate greed. This is exactly where TWBB’s problem lies. There isn’t enough progression and development in the plot to support this slow-as-molasses character construction. Daniel Plainview is ultimately a very shallow character. We learn that he is an inherently very greed man as evident by his abusive behavior and murder, but this fact was as plain as day from the get-go. Ever since Plainview drilled his first rig he had the grimacing thirst of a man craving a chocolate milkshake. The selfish competitive nature of Plainview could be seen all along. The entire movie ultimately only encapsulates a very small insignicant series of events - Plainview’s initial drillings and then his plummet into full blown insanity, leaving the viewers with a sense of “I feel like nothing happened.”
Conversely, Ben Wade, despite being an antagonist, epitomizes what good character development in film is. From the beginning of the film, he portrays himself as a heartless bastard that abides by no rules nor laws. He is an ice-cold killer and a womanizer. He maintains this facade for quite some time, hitting on Evans’ wife while in custody and resisting fruitfully against his captors. However, in the final stand-off, where Evans is the only man crazy enough/with enough balls to escort Wade to the train station, his true colors show. He had told William that he is rotten to the core, nothing but pure evil, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. As Dan escorts him admist the array of whizzing gun shots soaring over his head, Wade’s sense of empathy shows. He indeed abides by a code of conduct and operates under a legitimate rule set. He understands Dan’s desperation as having arisen from his deep poverty, relating to this feeling as he was once in that position and that is what turned him into living a life of vice and sin. He enters a cordial stipulation to aid Dan in the final conquest to 3:10 to Yuma, successfully making it safely to the train car thanks to the assistance of Little Evans. Although his men catch up to Dan, he fiercely commands them to step down. They disobey, and he promptly murders his most obedient followers who have risked their lives for his safety in the blink of an eye in the name of honor. In the end, nothing has changed, he still is a cold-hearted killer, but as an audience, we witness his brilliant character development as he slowly gains a conscience regarding his actions. He realizes that him and Dan are more alike than he had originally thought, and out of his intense relation to Dan’s ragged environment he continues to board the 3:10, so he makes sure that William doesn’t have to grow up into a life of hell like he and Dan did. Now, he knows he will easily escape from prison and likely keep being an outlaw, but he knows his bounty and general wrongdoing is too insourmountable to find a way out into a better life. In a way, William is the son that he never had, someone he knows will grow up, stay out of trouble, and accomplish great things in life. This evolution in him along with the constant spikes in action make 3:10 feel like a very eventful, exciting movie.
In my opinion, this stark contrast in quality of leading roles made it an absolute robbery that DDL got the nod over Russell Crowe at the Oscars for best actor. Daniel Plainview is an absolute mockery of what a leading character should be. Don’t get me wrong, TWBB is a great flick, but is ultimately undermined by the sheer brilliance of 3:10 to Yuma. I would like to see this movie added to Reddit’s top 250 list, as in my opinion, it is a classic. They took everything great about the original movie and made it better and more complete. It’s easy to dismiss this one as a brainless action flick a la Jason Bourne but it is so much more than that. The aforementioned performance by Russell Crowe as well as the emotional conviction seen by the Evans family, portrayed by Christian Bale and Dylan Minette is unrivaled by any other modern day Wild West movie IMO. Very under appreciated in general.
Submitted March 09, 2018 at 03:33AM by Dg_reddit http://ift.tt/2G8blsF