'3:10 to Yuma' arrives right on time

I have heard those who say "3:10 to Yuma" will revive the western. Unfortunately, I don't think that's likely to happen because there are simply not enough directors out there like James Mangold who are willing to invest this much life into an otherwise moribund genre. Even Clint Eastwood, if he ever makes another western, will no doubt re-examine the blacker and bleaker side of the Old West mythic, much as he did in his great absurdest tale "Unforgiven." Mangold, on the other hand, wants to recapture a simpler time, a time when westerns were simply a rip-roaring movie experience.

This makes this trip to Yuma an improvement over the 1957 original which came out when the so-called "adult western" was making its first real impact ("Gunsmoke" began its TV run two years earlier). It played up the psychological duel between the two principles (Glenn Ford was the outlaw, Van Helfin the besieged rancher, basically reprising his role in "Shane") as they sequestered themselves in a hotel room waiting for the train that was due to arrive 10 minutes after three.

Mangold, on the other hand, injects this film with a lot more action sequences, all of which work on the level of excitability if not credibility. Two stand out in particular. The first is a shootout against a trio of barely discernible Apaches and the second is a gun battle involving railroad men blasting tunnels through the mountains. I would add the major face off between good and evil at the end of the film except for the fact that I simply wasn't buying any of it.

It also helps that Mangold has in Russell Crowe an actor of far more depth and complexity than Glenn Ford was. What makes this ride aboard "3:10" so compelling is that this film's rancher, played by Christian Bale, seems so out of his league by the menacingly charismatic outlaw Ben Wade played by Crowe, that you begin to feel sorry for Bale's character, Dan Evans.

It is Dan, however, we meet first. He is struggling against more adversities than Job trying to carve a life for himself, his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and their two sons, Mark (Benjamin Petry) and his older brother William (16-year-old Logan Lerman in a role much expanded from the original) on their hard-scrabble farm. (With only one good leg, Dan reminded me of the title character played by Gerard Depardieu in "Jean de Florette.") Dan's slum landlord is about to foreclose on his land in a week; but, when notorious outlaw Wade is captured in Dan's neighborhood, Dan volunteers to help transport him to the town where Wade can be put on the train that will take him to Yuma prison. In return, Dan will be paid $200, which is all he needs to get out of debt.

As the film progresses, so does Bale. He seems to grow as the film moves along until Wade and Evans are on equal footing as the film draws to its conclusion. It's an interesting and clever interpretation of the character.

There are two other performances worth mentioning here. One comes from Peter Fonda who disappears inside the role of a Pinkerton bounty hunter who's made the capture of Wade his personal crusade and Ben Foster who is Wade's apt disciple in sadism but has learned nothing from his boss' compassionate side.

Mangold even makes the old western cliches seem fresh (the prairie wife, the frontier doctor), but I would have liked this film a lot better if I could have bought into the ending, as exciting as it was. Still, Mangold proves here that, in the hands of the right filmmaker, there's life in those old horse operas yet.

Grade: B