3:10 To Yuma

Action, Western

Christian Bale	Dan Evans
Chris Browning	Crawley
Chad Brummett	Kane
Russell Crowe	Ben Wade
Kevin Durand	Tucker
Peter Fonda	Byron McElroy
Ben Foster	Charlie Prince
Logan Lerman	William Evans
Dallas Roberts	Grayson Butterfield
Gretchen Mol	Alice Evans
Vinessa Shaw	Emmy Nelson
Alan Tudyk	Doc Potter
Luce Rains	Marshal Weathers

Director	James Mangold
Producer	Cathy Konrad; Stuart M. Besser; Dixie J. Capp
Writer	Michael Brandt; Derek Haas; Halsted Welles
Cinematography	Phedon Papamichael

The movie begins with a stage coach robbery by an outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his gang. After Ben Wade is captured he must be taken to the town of Contention to catch the train that is leaving at 3:10, heading for Yuma, so Wade can stand trial for the stagecoach robbery. Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a farmer in need of money in order to keep his farm, accepts the job of seeing Ben Wade to the train safely. During the three day journey the group must get past Indians and Ben Wade’s gang in order to get Wade onto the train that will take him to trial.

Here's hoping James Mangold's big, raucous, and ultrabloody remake of 3:10 to Yuma leads some moviegoers to check out Delmer Daves's beautifully lean, half-century-old original. That classic Western spun a tale of captured outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford)--deadly but disarmingly affable--and the small-time rancher and family man, Dan Evans (Van Heflin), desperate enough to accept the job of helping escort the badman to Yuma prison. Wade, knowing that his gang will be along at any moment to spring him, works at persuading the ultimately lone deputy to accept a bribe, turn his back on "duty," and go home safe and rich to his family. That the outlaw has come to admire his captor intriguingly complicates the suspense. All of the above applies in the new 3:10, but it takes a lot more huffing and puffing to get Wade (Russell Crowe this time) and Evans (Christian Bale) into position for the showdown. Mostly, more is less. To Mangold's credit, his movie doesn't traffic in facile irony or postmodern detachment; it aims to be a straight-up Western and deliver the excitement and charisma the genre's fans are starved for. But recognizing that contemporary viewers might be out of touch with the bedrock simplicity and strength of the genre--not to mention its code of honor--Mangold has supplied both Evans and Wade with a plethora of backstory and "motivations." At the overblown action climax, the crossfire of personal agendas is almost as frenetic as the copious gunplay. (By that point the movie has killed more people than the Lincoln County War.) Best thing about the remake is Russell Crowe's Ben Wade, a Scripture-quoting career villain with an artist's eye and a curiously principled sense of whom and when to murder. As his second-in-command, Ben Foster fairly pirouettes at every opportunity to commit mayhem, and Peter Fonda contributes a fierce portrait of an old Wade adversary turned bounty hunter for the Pinkerton detective agency. --Richard T. Jameson