Another Western

It was just serendipity that I chose 3-10 to Yuma from Netflix and it arrived just after my book group finished reading So Brave, Young, and Handsome. And it involved those Pinkertons again. So FYI I've included an excerpt from Wikipedia on those famous detectives of the late 1800s:

We Never Sleep", the famous motto of the Pinkerton Agency, redirects here. For the 1917 film starring Harold Lloyd, see We Never Sleep (film).

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, usually shortened to the Pinkertons, was a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton had become famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War.[citation needed] Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired out as a private army or militia.

The Pinkertons engaged in this movie were employed to guard a stagecoach from the Ben Wade's (Russell Crowe) gang of murderous, thieving scum-of-the-earth outlaws. They didn't really stand a chance and somehow our protagonist, rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) gets mixed up in trying to bring Ben to justice via an edge of your seat, shoot 'em up trip to catch the train at Yuma by 3:10. Of course it's much more complicated than that, and to tell you the truth I don't think I have enough testosterone running through my veins to really enjoy this kind of bloody, rough riding drama. It gives a kind of a sad twist of fate moralistic ending, but again it was just too gritty a tale for my liking.

Really, I kept thinking, how do these guys go to the bathroom out there on the dusty trail? And just how bad do they smell with no showers for days, weeks (months?!) on end . . .not to mention all of that blood and guts staining what was probably 100% cotton or wool clothing!