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In their review of 3:10 To Yuma, AfterElton.com detects "yet another coded gay villain" amid its cast of outlaws, adding Charlie Prince to the pantheon of memorable but politically incorrect screen baddies like The Silence of the Lambs's Buffalo Bill, 300's Xerxes, and Collateral's Vincent the Hitman. As portrayed by Ben Foster, an actor best known for having played Claire's creepy bisexual art school boyfriend on Six Feet Under and X-Men: The Last Stand's winged and six-packed (read: gay) Angel, it becomes exceedingly clear from Charlie's first appearance just which gang he runs with:

When we first see Charlie Prince, he is astride his horse, one hand draped delicately over the other with the limpest wrist this side of the Mississippi river. He is by far the nattiest dresser in the entire cast, and if that isn't mascara he's wearing when we first meet him then I'm Buffalo Bill. [...]

Within the first five minutes of Prince's appearance onscreen, one character refers to him as "missy" and "Charlie Princess," a nickname usually not uttered to his face, but apparently widely used behind his back. Naturally, Prince is utterly ruthless, killing anyone who gets in his way, and showing no emotion at all - not unless he's interacting with Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), who clearly makes Charlie swoon.

Without giving too much away, we think it's safe to say that all gay cowboys—even the good guys—ultimately get what's coming to them. But we can't help but wonder if director James Mangold couldn't have gotten his point across without the gratuitous third-act sequence in which we catch Charlie standing in front of a full-length mirror with his genitals tucked between his legs, admiring himself in a skeleton hoop skirt.