West on the rise

In the recently released 3:10 To Yuma, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale spend two hours gunslinging their way across the Arizona wastelands.

In the newly released The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Brad Pitt, starring as the titular bandit, does much of the same.

There is nary an alien, superhero or big, green ogre to be seen.

Yes, my friends, this is the return of the Western – a sprawling, legendary genre thought to be as extinct as the dodo bird or the sasquatch. Kevin Costner’s Open Range reopened the door in 2003 and the wildly underrated The Proposition made a bit of a critical splash in 2005. But stars with the stature of Pitt, Crowe and Bale haven’t touched a film of this type since the early 1990s.

However, Yuma and Jesse James are already among the most-talked-about movies of late 2007. Why have some of Hollywood’s best hopped onto the Western bandwagon? With turmoil and terror across America and the world at large, the old-fashioned sense of cowboy justice seems to be making a comeback. It was a simpler time when two men took ten paces, turned and fired.

And it’s not a stretch to say that the cowboy, much like the now-revered pirate, is the kind of loner rebel that appeals to today’s movie-going masses. He’ll rob from strangers and kill without a second thought, but there is also a sense of honor and respect that resonates with an audience. There is always room in America’s hearts for a man with a conscience and a gun, especially with the critics. Something about a lonely, barren landscape, the setting sun and a man on a horse never ceases to set pens and typewriters aflutter.

But a Western’s appeal, and approach, does not have to be so narrow. Crowe and Bale spend two hours of Yuma getting philosophical about principles and nobility. Cinema legend Peter Fonda rants about the morality of men in war-like conditions, and the surprisingly talented Ben Foster executes questionable orders with ruthless precision. The traditional formula seems the same on paper, but there is a deeper sense that director James Mangold and writers Derek Haas, Michael Brandt and Halsted Welles see Yuma as more than a paint-by-numbers romp through the Ol’ West.

It remains to be seen if Jesse James will offer the same depth as Mangold’s picture, but Yuma delivers more than the good-versus-bad dynamic that dominates the cliché Westerns of the past. But can these new films challenge the likes of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper? Far from it. Throughout the middle part of the 20th century, Westerns were where some of Hollywood’s brightest stars made their mark, mixing stereotypical pieces with true cinematic genius. We’ll be lucky if we ever see an iconic Western character like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name ever again. But it’s refreshing to know that in an era of moviemaking marred by sequels, remakes and reimaginings, a kind of film ripe for refurbishing has returned to the forefront.

Neither Yuma nor James will aspire for box-office domination, but their mere existence is a step in the right direction for Hollywood. There is a certain bit of irony in praising the studios for trying something different when Yuma itself is a remake, but the circumstances of the situation allow for a bit of leniency. The way this business is going nowadays, anything different can come out smelling as fresh as daisies. They certainly weren’t knocking down doors half-dozen years ago to make Westerns. So kudos to Pitt, Crowe and Bale, men who take on, and essentially insure the creation of, provocative, challenging roles as often as their bankable, boilerplate ones. And bravo to the Western, because after a summer of swashbuckling, wizardry and loud, shape-shifting robots, a grizzled face under a rawhide hat is a welcome breath of fresh air.