Glenn Ford and Van Heflin star in the classic 1957 drama.
Here’s our weekly overview of choice options for home-screen viewing. (Note: All times listed are Eastern.)
Lawman
Be forewarned: The body count is conspicuously high in this purposefully grim 1971 western directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish). Burt Lancaster is sternly authoritative as Jared Maddox, a brutally efficient marshal on the trail of rowdy cowboys who shot up his town and left an elderly citizen fatally wounded. Robert Duvall (who, despite his prominent billing, has relatively little screen time), Lee J. Cobb, Robert Ryan, J.D. Cannon, Joseph Wiseman, Ralph Waite, and Sheree North (who would later costar opposite John Wayne in The Shootist) appear in the unusually strong supporting cast. (8:50 p.m. Monday, Encore Westerns)
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Director Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow) and scriptwriter Halsted Welles (The Hanging Tree) skillfully expanded Elmore Leonard’s 1953 short story into a gritty and gripping classic western about a cash-strapped rancher (Van Heflin) who agrees to help transport a notorious outlaw (Glenn Ford) to a neighboring town for a train ride to justice. (Not surprisingly, members of the outlaw’s gang have other ideas.) The 2007 remake starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe has much to recommend it — but not quite as much as the lean and mean original version. (11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Turner Classic Movies)
The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid
Filmmaker Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) draws on the legends of Cole Younger and Jesse James in this colorfully written, richly detailed and robustly performed 1972 western. Cliff Robertson plays Younger, who attempts to be a voice of reason while advising his men to take a vacation from outlawry as the Missouri Legislature considers a bill to grant them amnesty. But hot-headed Jesse James (Robert Duvall) is eager to plunder Northfield, Minnesota, site of the biggest bank west of the Mississippi. When the legislators, bribed by railroad barons, vote down the amnesty, Younger reluctantly agrees to the Northfield heist, and barely lives to regret it. Duvall dials it up to 11 in his wildly flamboyant performance as James, and is positively side-splitting when he shamelessly dons a dress to disguise himself while slipping past pursuing lawman. (10:50 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, Encore Westerns)
Jane Got a Gun (2016)
When Gavin O’Connor’s solidly made and surprisingly satisfying western finally hit theaters last January, too many critics (and, evidently, more than a few potential ticket buyers) focused on its troubled past — a worst-case scenario involving last-minute cast changes, musical director’s chairs, and repeatedly delayed release dates — while remaining indifferent to its merits as a revisionist yet respectful spin on genre conventions. Oscar winner Natalie Portman is persuasive and compelling in the lead role of Jane Hammond, a resourceful pioneer woman whose husband (Noah Emmerich) is attacked and badly wounded by his erstwhile outlaw associates. To ward off additional assaults by villain John Bishop (Ewan McGregor), Jane adds for help from her former lover, gunslinger Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton). In the end, however, Jane is the one who shoots and scores because — well, a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. (Netflix)
