Old-school oater

>> Russell Crowe and Christian Bale star in
the well-made Western 3:10 to Yuma

by MARK SLUTSKY

Elmore Leonard’s stories and novels have always been popular with film folk, but I hadn’t realized for how long. His story “3:10 to Yuma,” which was published in Dime Western Magazine in 1953, was first adapted for the screen in 1957; now, some 50 years later, it’s back in movie theatres again. Directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line, Girl, Interrupted), the new 3:10 to Yuma is an old-fashioned Western of the sort Hollywood only makes every couple of years nowadays. The last movie like this, that I can remember, was the Kevin Costner vehicle Open Range, which was also a straight-up, fast-paced flick with no pretensions to being the “last Western,” or at all elegiac.

Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a Civil War vet eking out an existence on a patch of Arizona land with his wife (Gretchen Mol) and two sons. A drought has left the Evans clan desperate for cash, and their greedy landlord is eager to foreclose and sell off their property to the railroad company.

Riding into town, Bale and sons come across a bloody stagecoach robbery masterminded by legendary outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe); they escape unharmed and make it to their destination, where Crowe’s been caught by the local authorities. Bale volunteers to join the gang escorting the crook to the town of Contention, where he’ll be put on the eponymous train and sent to prison. Of course, their journey will take them through Apache country and Crowe’s old gang (now led by creepy Charlie Prince, played by Ben Foster) is on their tail.

Nobody said this wasn’t old-fashioned stuff; the movie even ends with a protracted homage to both Rio Bravo and High Noon. But that’s okay, because as a dusty, grim and entertaining genre film, 3:10 to Yuma succeeds. The action isn’t spectacular in its choreography or filming, but it works well enough, and the film is populated with an enjoyable assortment of badasses, each sporting their own particular codes of honour. Crowe in particular plays a vicious but elusive and charming bad guy, but Bale and Peter Fonda (as a grizzled Pinkerton agent) hold their own as well. It’s a well-made oater of the old school.

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