I’ve been meaning to buy and read security-expert Bruce Schneier‘s Beyond Fear for some time. A couple days ago I perused a copy at the bookstore and stumbled across this passage:
Hollywood likes to portray stagecoach robberies as dramatic acts of derring-do: The robbers gallop alongside the fleeing horses and jump onto the careening coach. Actually, it didn’t happen that way. Stagecoaches were ponderous vehicles that couldn’t negotiate steep hills without everyone getting out and pushing. All the robbers had to do was find a steep hill and wait. When the defensive systems — staying inside the coach, being able to gallop away — failed, the robbers attacked.
Then, yesterday, I caught a showing of 3:10 to Yuma — in which the robbers gallop alongside a careening ironclad coach. A careening ironclad coach with a mounted Gatling gun. I guess that hurt the film’s credibility for me.
I haven’t seen the 1957 version, but I understand that it added its own twist to the original Elmore Leonard story.