3:10 To Yuma (Blu-ray)

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Ultimately, this film's integrity comes from its moral ambiguity, same as the original. The good guy is isn't all good, and the bad guy isn't all bad. And when they act in ways that seem momentarily incomprehensible, the logic behind it is that they see things in each other that they admire. So do we. And that's refreshing.

Video:
Though this is a nice transfer, there are a lot of selective-focus frames in this film where one character is sharply delineated and the rest are slightly blurred. There are soft-focus shots, too, where the background is blurred, but this is a director's decision. Look at the figures in focus and close-up and you'll see an incredible amount of detail. The MPEG-4 transfer looks really good, with no edge distortion at all. The aspect ratio is 2.35:1.

Audio:
The video was impressive, but the 7.1 PCM uncompressed audio was even better. Boy, does this soundtrack rock. The only thing is, I found myself having to turn the sound down during the action scenes, when it seemed to get significantly louder. Otherwise, it's an impressive audio transfer. An additional option is Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX, with English and Spanish subtitles. To my ear, there's a drop-off, but the Surround EX is still a powerful track.

Extras:
This 50GB dual-layered disc accommodates a bunch of bonus features, but as I said, you have to have Profile 1.1 to access some of the Blu-ray exclusive features, like "Inside Yuma: A feature-length picture-in-picture interactive documentary about the creation of the film that's playable while you watch--on some players. One of our readers let me know that he was able to access it with his Profile 1.0 player, but I couldn't pull up the PIP with mine. Even if you can't access "Inside Yuma," with its intermittent PIP video stream, there are still a ton of features here to make it worthwhile until a firmware upgrade rides over the hill like cavalry to the rescue. "3:10 to Score" delves into the music, while "The Guns of Yuma" gives you a short primer on the real weapons used in the film, "Sea to Shining Sea" takes a look at the transcontinental railroad, and "Outlaws, Gangs and Posses" offers a few talking heads' opinions on bad guys and their ways. There's also a standard making-of documentary that shows a lot of footage of the actual filming, as well as "An Epic Explored" that shows Mangold offering his thoughts about the Western and where this film fits. One of the best features, for fans of Westerns, is an interview with Elmore Leonard, who talks about his other successes as well. But historical buffs will really appreciate the well-done "Historical Timeline of the West," which shows a map with pinpoint locations to the right, text and graphic to the left, and a timeline on the bottom for a kind of 3-D history lesson. It's really well done, I have to say, and one of my favorite features on this disc.

A commentary track with Mangold is pretty standard, but also pretty interesting. This guy has some opinions and he's not afraid to share them, though the whole tone of the commentary track is pretty low-key.

Bottom Line:
Crowe and Bale turn in dynamite performances in this remake of a Western that was a classic to begin with, and a new classic now. I would agree with those that think this the best Western since "Unforgiven." And it begs the same question now as it did back when "Unforgiven" won the Academy Award: Why aren't people making more Westerns? Mangold says in one of the bonus features that it's because Westerns are no longer a genre--they're a period film. That might make for interesting speculation, but as long as it fulfills all the expectations of the genre films that came before it, "3:10 to Yuma" is still a member of a pretty exclusive club . . . which seems to meet every 10 years or so.