3:10 to Yuma

Believable? I'm not entirely sure. But sympathetic? Absolutely.


Talk about realizing that there are some things worth dying for. And for doing that within the eye of the community (it isn't just that Christian Bale wanted his son to think that he was brave, it was that he wanted to be brave and just in part to serve as an example for his son; what more admirable motivation could one have to be virtuous than to teach others [most especially your child] through that virtue?)

Russell Crowe proved to be an absolutely sympathetic "bad guy." From his very intuitive and insightful psychological observations, to his love for the beautiful (which we see in his drawing--birds, his lover, and Bale [the just]). It is striking to think of the difference between Crowe and the serial murder in No Country for Old Men. He had the capacity for friendship and love, which showed something good in his character. Moreover, in the last scene of the film, he realized that real friendship could only occur within the community and its laws. He could experience that friendship only with Bale, who was turning him over to be "hung in the morning." He could not experience that friendship through his gang, who risked their lives in order to set him free.

Through the picture that he drew of Bale, we see that the Bible (and justice) comes to have another meaning for Crowe than it had in his childhood, in which he associated it with desertion. Bale was the opposite of a deserter--he would not desert his land, nor would he desert justice and the job to which he'd committed.