Title: 3:10 to Yuma Release Date: 2007 Genre: Drama Director: James Mangold
In a presidential election year it is impossible to escape the rhetoric of people who believe they have an idea for how to make this world a better place. Apparently all we need is “this policy” and “that legislation” and America will be back on track. But having an idea and seeing it happen are two very different things. Is it what people say or what people do that most defines who they are?
For all of us there is the life we live and then there is the life we aspire to live—the one we talk about and the one we practice. We work to see the gap between these two realities narrow, taking steps forward and backward everyday. And while it is fine to sit around with friends and discuss the world’s problems and how we think they should be fixed, one must ask, does having strong opinions on issues make us involved in them?
3:10 to Yuma arrives on DVD at the perfect time. In the deluge of grandiose ideas for how to change this country via Washington DC, we are given a film that shows us how much can be done by one life lived well.
In Arizona in the late 1800's, an infamous outlaw, Ben Wade [Russell Crow] is captured. A struggling rancher and Civil War veteran, Dan Evans [Christian Bale], volunteers to deliver him alive to the 3:10 to Yuma, a train that will take the killer to trial.
3:10 to Yuma has all the ingredients of a classic western. But rather than having the homeless hero ride into town, save the day and then ride off into the sunset, this film is a story about the effect of one life on another. Instead of quickly drawn pistols, it is integrity and a commitment to a sense of deeper meaning that has the last word. Dan Evans’ devotion to a mostly unspoken core value becomes a reference point for Ben Wade to evaluate his life by. And while Dan never sets out to change Ben and Ben thinks of himself as someone who will never change, 3:10 to Yuma begs us to believe that there is no one who is outside the effect of a life well lived.
Maybe it is our walk being more radical than our talk that will affect this world.
Does your life speak more loudly than your words? Are you living for something that you are willing to die for? Are you living for it in a way that would causes others to die for it too?
These are the questions that Dan Evans has hitched his life to….Are you climbing aboard?
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