3:10 to Yuma

Map showing the locations of the towns of Bisbee, Contention and Yuma, Arizona.


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Bisbee and Contention are in Southeast Arizona. Both are within 20 miles of Tombstone and Sierra Vista. Yuma is in the Southwest corner of Arizona, quite a ways away, so taking a train there makes sense.

It was a pretty good movie, good characters, some good acting, reasonable plot, but there were a whole bunch of nits that bugged me about it.

A Pinkerton man enlists four men to go with him to take their prisoner to the train station in Contention. They camp out along the way. They are being pursued by the prisoners gang and/or Apache Indians. One guy is supposed to be on watch, and where is he? Out in the dark, keeping an eye out? No, he is sitting by the fire with the rest of the bunch, looking at the fire, ruining his night vision. And when the Indians start shooting, do they get out of the light and hit the dirt? No, they run to the fire and stand around it like a bunch of ninnies. Hey, Indians, here I am! Shoot at me!

Then there is this business of laying down of guns when confronted by bad guys, and the one legged man running and leaping over the tops of buildings. And the really feeble reason for pursuing this job that is sure to get him killed uttered by the one legged guy WHILE being choked by the killer. And the fourteen times the prisoner does something that certainly justifies shooting him on the spot, and nobody ever does. And the way the Pinkerton man is too nice and fancy. Pinkertons were tough guys. You didn't get to be a Pinkerton man at $18 a day when everyone else is making $2 a day by being a pantywaist.

Oh, did I mention, the well fed, big and strong Chinese railway workers? Or the very smoothly graded roadbed? Or our gang getting in a gun fight with with another lawman's bunch over the who gets the prisoner? Or using electricity to torture the prisoner? Why bother with the wires are all that? And the prisoner did not really look like he was suffering that much from it. And was the prisoner ever tied up? No, that would have clapped a stopper over his shenanigans.

So it was a morality play. It would have played a lot better if they would have gotten the details right.