Russell Crowe plays the bad (or maybe not all bad?) outlaw Ben Wade. Christian Bale is the struggling rancher, being persecuted by the railroad men who want his land, who volunteers to help take Ben Wade to the train station for a trip to prison and maybe the gallows.
There's some tough guys in this movie.
Peter Fonda is a crusty old Pinkerton guard Byron McElroy who gets shot in the chest, has the bullet removed by a veterinarian with no anesthesia (by request) and is back in action in about an hour.
Ben Wade kills a lot of people before we meet up with him in the movie and kills a couple more while he is under the guard of several men and in handcuffs.
My favorite line is when Ben Wade is being taken on horseback, in handcuffs, to the train station and Byron and him start to trade insults. Byron makes a rude comment about Ben's mother and father. Ben jumps off his horse, onto Byron, starts wailing on him and eventually with superhuman like strength throws Byron up into the air and off a cliff with the comment,
"Even bad men love their mommas."
It's over the top.
All in all though it's a good movie with a good cast and a timeless universal storyline about courage and the nature of good and evil.
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Side note - I met Peter Fonda many years ago when I was working for Business Data Systems installing/repairing point of sale equipment in retail businesses in Montana. I was in a Mexican fast food place in Livingston, Montana working on their cash register. It was a slack time and there weren't any customers in the place. I looked out the window and saw Peter Fonda pull up in an old pickup. He came in and got some food to go. It was me and one or two employees of the place and a big movie star. Actually it was pretty low-key; he was polite, quiet and just a regular person.
