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3:10 to Yuma
(R)

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Dan Evans (Christian Bale) leads outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe, right) to the prison train.
By the bullet-ridden finale of 3:10 to Yuma, a mess of bodies lies perforated, bleeding and lifeless. The reputation of the allegorical 1957 classic Western directed by Delmer Daves -- on which this new one is based -- remains standing tall. In this do-over from Walk the Line director James Mangold, Christian Bale plays beaten-down amputee rancher Dan Evans while Russell Crowe struts his showy stuff as charismatic, skirt-chasing outlaw Ben Wade. Do-gooder Dan transports badass Ben across the Arizona desert to Yuma where a train will take Ben to court and, we assume, the hangman's noose.

Westerns, those parables of good vs. evil set among the sagebrush and the unsmiling, were once a staple of American cinema when brilliant, ornery old sons of bitches like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and George Stevens rode the range and made stirring, indelible classics of the genre. Decades of Star Wars and superhero movies have pretty much left the Western in the dust (apart from the occasional Unforgiven, Open Range and, on cable, Deadwood).

The welcome arrival of 3:10 to Yuma feels a bit like slipping back into a funky old pair of dusty, timeworn Levis, albeit ones that have been pressed at the dry cleaner. Expanding on the original story by Elmore Leonard and screenplay by Halstead Welles, Mangold and writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas give the new movie a less mythical, more stripped-down tone.

Dan's wife (Gretchen Mol, right) takes issue with his dangerous charge.
But it still features especially enjoyable, beautifully matched performances from Crowe and Bale as two sides of a very tarnished coin. Ben Foster, late of Six Feet Under and X-Men, is a standout as Crowe's psychotic number-two man, as are Peter Fonda as a bounty hunter and Gretchen Mol as Bale's loving but strained wife. 3:10 to Yuma may not single-handedly revive the Western, but it winds up being a tense, rough, bloody ride well worth taking.

By Stephen Rebello

photo credit: Richard Foreman / Lionsgate

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