Good old-fashioned entertainment

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2010)

Remake of a 1957 film (Delmer Daves directed, with an excellent performance from Van Heflin as the rancher and Civil War veteran). Here Mangold give us a real good entertainment without the ambition to make something epic or glamorous (imagine Gibson or Costner directed this one with their "wanna be De Mille style" to present us The Final Epic Tale of Old West!!). Great costumes designed from Arianne Phillips (especially those of Crowe and Foster), outstanding music score composed by Marco Beltrami (Academy Award nominee), a compelling plot, some riveting action scenes (especially the last one), and a pair of great performances from Russell Crowe as the amoral , famous outlaw Ben Wade and and Ben Foster as his loyal and psychopath buddy (he almost "steals" every scene with his great costume, his crazy face expression, he reminds me Richard Widmark in Garden of Evil or Warren Oates in The Wild Bunch)