3:10 to Yuma
Director: James Mangold. Screenplay: Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael. Film editing: Michael McCusker. Production design: Andrew Menzies. Music: Marco Beltrami. Producer: Cathy Konrad. With: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Dallas Roberts, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Vinessa Shaw, Alan Tudyk, Luce Rains, Gretchen Mol, Lennie Loftin, Rio Alexander, Johnny Whitworth, Shawn Howell, Pat Ricotti, Ramon Frank, Deryle J. Lujan, James Augure, Brian Duffy, Jason Rodriguez, Kevin Durand, Chris Browning, Chad Brummett, Forrest Fyre, Genjamin Petry, Arron Shiver, Sean Hennigan, Girard Swan, Christopher Berry. USA. 121 min. 2007.
For whatever reason, 2007 is the year that revived the traditional musical with “Hairspray,” and also the traditional western with this remake of the 1957 oater directed by Delmer Daves from Halsted Welles’s screeplay based on an Elmore Leonard story. The plot centers on a rancher who’s being paid to put an outlaw on the title train so he can be tried and hanged with proper Old West ceremony. Naturally the bad guy uses a full battery of psychological wiles—as bad guys were wont to do in 1950s westerns--to shake up the situation and make a getaway.
Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are excellent (so what’s new?) and it’s a nice surprise to see Peter Fonda back in the saddle, although it takes a while so recognize him, so persuasively grizzly has he made himself. The movie is overlong and sometimes murky, leaving a key turnaround in the story—which abruptly inverts the relationship between the two main characters—inexplicably twisting in the wind. But its entertainment value is such that old-fashioned westerns may start regaining their long-lost credibility with young moviegoers. – David Sterritt
