Get Shorty Goes West

Elmore Leonard churned out dozens of Western stories until he became the doyen of American crime writers, and '3.10 to Yuma' proves that all he did was change the locations. Unlike most Westerns, which are about gunplay and horses, this cracking little film is about talking, waiting, assessing your enemy, before a final, low-key action climax.

The story is simple: Van Heflin is Dan Evans, a tired, hard-working farmer who inadvertantly gets mixed up with the capture of the dangerous, charismatic outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford). When Wade's gang gather to free their leader, Evans reluctantly agrees to guard the bad guy until the titular train arrives to take him to prison.

What makes this such a treat is the slow, inexorable rise of tension. Helfin isn't the most exciting of leading men, whereas Ford is much more agreeable and charming, and that's the point. By the end of the film, virtually everyone has turned on Heflin and tried to persuade or force him to take Ford's money and let him go. Like 'High Noon', it's about Doing The Right Thing, but in Ford's attractive, magnetic villain, you can see Leonard's skill at drawing and understanding criminal characters. There are few shoot-outs, but the tense conversations between Heflin and Ford are rivetting, and the climax is as nail-biting as any of the Westerns you've actually heard of.