3:10 to Yuma: The Legend

Rating: 10/10 (21 September 2007)

There's something very special about James Mangold's "3:10 to Yuma," a prince among remakes. Looking back, it's possible to recognize this in the first few scenes of the film. A bandit gang plans to rob a stagecoach in the American Southwest of the late-1860s. The bandits mount-up, but not before we see one of them place a few fistfuls of dynamite into his saddlebags. Surprise-surprise, a few minutes later we're in for a treat: the first use of "shoot the gas tank"-tactics in a Western. It's an unlikely occurrence, brought to us for pure enjoyment.
And so it is, I suggest, with the entire film. Unlike the 1957 original, which tells it straight, this version tells it crooked. We're not watching how events actually transpired. No, we're watching how we *wished* they'd transpired. If you want the truth, then check out the 1957 version, herein lies "3:10 to Yuma: The Legend."
You should remember that when you first heard the 3:10 story you were lying asleep at night as a child with your older brother. He lit a match and told you of when it was "your old man and Ben Wade to the station, when no one else would"