3:10 to Yuma (1957) – Pick

Spy Kids (2001) - Pick

Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) - Pass

Recently released on DVD, Delmer Devlin’s 1957 classic Western 3:10 to Yuma is a lesser-known classic that regularly evokes apt comparisons to the better-known High Noon.

Among the similarities are an atmosphere of quiet menace and tension, a suspenseful wait for the arrival of a train and the inevitable shootout that follows, and a peaceable hero who, in his hour of need, finds himself increasingly abandoned by every ally until at last he stands alone against impossible odds.

As he did in Shane, Van Heflin plays a subtly impotent homesteader whose life is complicated by the arrival of a more virile man of action, in this case a charismatic rogue rather than a soft-spoken gunslinger. Heflin is the impoverished rancher Dan Evans. Glenn Ford is the charming outlaw Ben Wade, who falls into the hands of the law and must be escorted to justice before his gang can rescue him.

What follows is a battle less of wits than of character as Wade seeks to goad Evans into giving up, making a mistake, even taking a bribe to let him go. Although somewhat overshadowed by the smooth-talking bandit, Evans acquits himself well enough to earn his self-respect — and the respect of the outlaw.

This week a new twofer DVD set offers the first two installments of Robert Rodriguez’s popular Spy Kids trilogy. Strangely, there doesn’t seem ever to have been a set collecting all three. That doesn’t matter, because the original is the only one worth seeing. A rollicking, wildly inventive lark that put family life in a romantic, even heroic light, Spy Kids celebrates marriage as the ultimate adventure and raising a family as a mission as vital as saving the world.

Surreal Seuss-like set design, wacky creatures with names like Fooglies and Thumb-Thumbs, and more spy gizmos than Q’s whole laboratory make for sublimely silly fun. Dashing spy parents Gregorio and Ingrid (Antonio Banderas and Carla Guigino) embody the subversively wholesome notion that parents are cooler than their kids suspect. Carmen and Juni are recognizable children rather than miniature adults; they bicker and taunt each other — sometimes too much — but with real affection underneath it all.

Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams has the imagination and energy of the earlier film — but not, alas, the heart or the wit. The creatures are wackier than ever, the gadgets even more over-the-top. But the theme of family togetherness takes a back seat to inter-family rivalry and workplace ambition, and the slapdash story includes whole subplots that have no explanation or even plot relevance.

Content advisory           

3:10 to Yuma: Much menace and suspense; some deadly gunplay; some innuendo and an implied sexual encounter. Spy Kids: Comic violence and mild scenes of menace and suspense. Might be too much for very sensitive kids. Spy Kids 2: Action/comic violence and menace; fantasy monsters; brief gross-out humor; minor crude language; an end-credits teen pop-diva style dance sequence. Okay for older kids.