The AFI keeps giving premature Life Achievement Awards to stars who either are getting it too soon (Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson) or who don't really deserve it (Barbra Streisand). I know it's mostly a fundraising event: the award is usually given to anyone who is still alive and will show up with lots of celebrities to testify on their behalf. However, I can't think of anyone currently living who deserves it more than Glenn Ford. Although consistently taken for granted, here is an actor who has made scores of films in virtually every genre and played a wide variety of parts in all of them. In `3:10 to Yuma,' he's on the wrong side of the law for a change as a smooth talking outlaw leader who is captured by deceptively mild-mannered farmer Van Heflin. Heflin has to get Ford out of town on the 3:10 train before his gang can rescue him. The situation strains credulity on several points. 1. I would think a jail cell would be a safer place to keep Ford than a hotel room, where he can look out the window and wave to a cohort. 2. Heflin is always telling the manipulative Ford to shut up. Why doesn't he just put a gag on his mouth? Oh that's right, then there wouldn't have been a movie. 3. The ending is unsatisfying. [POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT] What I would like to have seen happen: Ford is accidentally shot by his own gang, while Heflin escapes on the train. (This is not what actually does happen.) Despite all these weaknesses, Delmer Daves' adroit direction (he was a master of the crane shot), and the excellent performances of Heflin and Ford manage to build up a lot of tension. `Yuma' just misses being a classic.
Review of 3:10 to Yuma
