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GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 9/6/07)

Certain parties have been so vociferously extolling the manly qualities of this remake of the 1957 Western that I wonder why distributor Lionsgate hasn't attempted some cross-marketing — the company could conceivably clean up with a 3:10 to Yuma–branded erectile dysfunction medicine, or at the very least a Sloppy Joe mix. While I myself did not walk out of the screening with a burning desire to inform the first stranger I saw that the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse, I was more than reasonably engrossed for the running time of the picture.

Bale plays down-on-his-luck Arizona rancher Dan Evans, while Crowe is the charismatic, theatrical, and thoroughly venomous outlaw Ben Wade. While the original was something of a tense two-hander, with stolid Van Heflin and sly Glenn Ford in the leads, this adaptation of a short story by Elmore Leonard (the screenwriters here are Halstead Welles, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas) opens things up more, adding a problematic relationship between Evans and his oldest boy Will, who seems admiring of Wade while witnessing his ruthless armored-stagecoach robbery.

Evans's failure to make a go of his ranch combined with his literal lameness (he lost one leg in the Civil War) seems to have cost him the respect of everyone in his life. So he signs on, in exchange for a promised $200, to be part of the team that delivers Wade to a station where he'll be placed on the train to the Yuma prison. But Wade himself is a slippery customer; his vicious gang, led by his perhaps too-attached disciple Charlie (Foster) is in hot pursuit; Apaches and renegade track-layers are also intent on making life miserable for everyone involved. Everyone on the trek — from the experienced, ornery bounty hunter (Fonda, in a rather Eastwood-esque turn) to the affable veterinarian (Alan Tudyk) — somehow falls by the wayside until it's just Evans, Wade, the private security operative coordinating the effort (Roberts), and Will, who watches his dad make an agonizing decision.

Mangold, following up his better-than-average Walk the Line, does some strong work here, looking for fresh takes on Western drama commonplaces. Yes, Evans's wife, played by Moll, is kind of a standard-issue nag; but Mangold cannily stages the couple's major confrontation in a room close enough to the one where company's sitting that discretion compels them to fight in whispers, which makes the whole scene fresher. Similarly, the subplot involving Will doesn't pan out as predictably as it might have.

In the battle of the leading men, Crowe's character has a slight edge, and the actor really makes the most of it, showing us how boyishly mischievous charm and utter venality can exist without seeming contradiction in the same being. But Bale builds to a pretty impressive boil himself after laying back for about three quarters of the film. Foster's crazed villain is a tougher call — one isn't sure if it's the character or the actor who's causing your profound annoyance, but one is surely pleased to see the character get what's coming to him.

Lest one get the impression I'm talking about Chekhov here, well, no — 3:10 to Yuma is in fact a suspenseful, action-packed Western. That it will "revive the genre" is unlikely, but it's a welcome indicator that good, exciting work can still be done within it.

— Glenn Kenny