3:10 to Yuma

I don't, as a rule, enjoy movies that are violent. I'd prefer to watch, as I did Sunday night, a new PBS version of Jane Austen's "Persuasion". However, I enjoyed "3:10 to Yuma" just as I enjoyed, many years hence, "Unforgiven". I think it's interesting when a storyteller attempts to make stock characters three dimensional. I'm not talking about the whole "take the villain and make him the hero" thing that's so popular these days. In more thoughtful movies, the Good Guy is sometimes unsure, and the Bad Guy will perhaps choose to do something merciful and right in between his bouts of selfishness. I thought "3:10"did a good job of showing the shadows. It was also interesting for me to watch it the night after I had so enjoyed the ordered, manicured world of "Persuasion". I've also, to add some cayenne to the boiling soup that is my thought process, been doing a little reading up on Ron Paul. Here's what these two movies and one presidential hopeful have in common: interesting, and somehow similar views of justice. In Jane Austen's world (early 19th century England) there is no mention of a larger Justice. As society goes, everyone is exceedingly well behaved. The only mention of guns is in reference to shooting pheasants as sport. The ill-behaved suffer only withering glances of disapproval or, on the rare occasion that the behavior is deemed truly heinous, the shunning of polite society. In this tidy world things, for the most part, remain tidy. In "3:10 to Yuma" which takes place in late 1860's Arizona, nothing is tidy. The guys who are supposed to be keeping order are greedy and cowardly, the honest man is plagued by drought and a mercenary moneylender, and the outlaws pillage unchecked and without conscience. One of the over-arching themes of the movie is this: If no one is watching, will a good man chose to do what is right? So, what does any of this have to do with Ron Paul? That will have to wait until tomorrow. The napping have awakened.