656-657 Jubal and 3:10 to Yuma

[zedz]

Because Cowboy is awful?

And Criterion have never, ever included awful films in any of their box sets.

[domino harvey]

Cowboy is hardly awful (then again I think 3:10 to Yuma is, particularly the spectacular miscasting of Glenn Ford), it's just a minor work slightly reminiscent of Red River's dynamics re: John Wayne's character. If you can't get with the soapy "teenage" melodramatics Daves does best or Steiger's manic overacting, then yeah, there obviously will be little left for you in Jubal, but it's certainly the best of the three being bandied about.

[Fred Holywell]

Speaking of "Cowboy"... I've uploaded a few screencaps from the Sony R2 DVD.

[matrixschmatrix]

Having finally watched Jubal-

It's a deeply irritating movie, as much because it feels like one that could have been great as because it fails in that. The location photography is stunning (though either the transfer or the film stock weakens it a bit, as the color seems washed out throughout) and both Glenn Ford and Ernest Borgnine have a lot to recommend them (Borgnine in particular seems like an ideal choice for a man who is both a charming and loyal friend and understandably unbearable boor of a husband,) and even Rod Steiger is irritating in a way that seems defensible given his role. But the plot is infuriating.

Spoiler

From the beginning, it's obvious that things are going to explode at some point- too obvious, really, as Pinky is an open and obvious snake throughout, an Iago that shows his venom on the surface, and it's absurd that he'd be kept around that long. The whole machination of it relies mostly on everyone being an idiot and listening to someone whose argument makes no sense, which badly undercuts the stoic righteousness of the heroes- all they need to do is not deliberately act jerks, and they'll come out ahead here. Which isn't necessarily fatal in of itself, as arguably one could say the same of Johnny Guitar, but here the cranking tension and the unbearable tendency of people to listen to the angriest idiot stops on a dime at the last minute, only to target someone else, someone we're meant to be ok with getting a taste of mob justice. Neither Pinky nor Mae ever feel like real characters in any case- though the movie, in one of its best moments, stops to realize that Mae is actually totally justified in her feelings, and gives her a speech to defend her case (though her attraction to Jubal doesn't make much sense) it nonetheless uses her as much as a plot device as it does Pinky, and callously kills her off the moment she's no longer needed.

Jubal himself seems like a character who would be better served by an ending that saw him actually integrated with the community- allied with Shep, perhaps, the madness of jealousy forgotten and overcome, perhaps with Shep accepting that he could never be much of a husband to Mae and letting her ride off into new horizons, though I dislike trying to make a different movie in the teeth of the one we're given. Jubal's backstory is a reasonably interesting one for what is otherwise a fairly standard Shane kind of figure, and could have given him an implied arc hiding in the background, even if his actual character never seems to change. I don't know, this movie frustrated me- and I liked 3:10 to Yuma quite a lot.

[Finch]

4K in February 2026


4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Interviews with author Elmore Leonard and actor Glenn Ford’s son and biographer, Peter Ford
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones

Cover by Gregory Manchess