How the west was won - by a couple of foreigners

3:10 to Yuma (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381849/)

Like clockwork, every 50 years they make a movie titled 3:10 to Yuma. Yep, it is a remake. Haven't seen the original, but this one was pretty darn good. I haven't seen many Westerns recently, but maybe the new wave is to cast non-Americans for the lead roles in this traditional American genre. This movie saw Russell Crowe (New Zealand) and Christian Bale (Wales) as the lead characters. In another Western I saw on the shelf at Blockbuster, Serafim Falls, Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neason (both Irish) played the lead characters. For me it is not that the Old West should be an exclusive genre - after all, Sergio Leone and Louis Lamore are classic Western guys. I am just impressed by their spot-on accents. I once heard it is easier for someone with an accent to speak with another accent - like a speaker with an English accent can more easily speak with a southern accent than with no accent whatsoever. Whatever - I ramble. The movie. It was good. Really good. Great story, lively action, multi-layered characters. It made me feel like a woman in this sense - I knew the guy was bad, but I liked him anyway. The DVD extras were good too - I learned some stuff about the Old West gangs and how the famous outlaws met their respective ends. One fun fact was that during the filming, 3 feet of snow fell on the set of the Western town that was supposed to be having a drought, so they had to bring in literally tons of dirt to cover it up. They made their sets mostly from scratch, built buildings and all that. You'd think that those resources would be better used to build homes for the needy or rebuild New Orleans or something, but hopefully it didn't all go to waste. Despite the waste of resources, I still give 3:10 to Yuma 4/5.