I was playing Zelda on my DS last night while watching this movie and I think I missed something crucial.
why did Russell Crowe kill his posse at the end? I missed the build up to that moment
He was pissed because he’d grown to like Christian Bale and had decided to play along with letting Bale get him onto the train so he (Bale) could look good in front of his son. Crowe had already implied that he could escape pretty much whenever he felt like it anyway (and had done so before), so he was just going to let it look like Bale had beaten him so Bale’s kid wouldn’t lose his heroic image of his dad. Crowe’s men wrecked the whole thing and pissed Crowe off so he shot them.
Thanks. I thought it might be that but it seemed to simple. I thought I had missed an earlier exchange between the leader of his posse and Crowe that added to it but apparently not.
For the most part the killings by Crowe and the posse had been to people that deserved it. The violence in the town and against Bale and his son was different, and I think Crowe got disilusioned.