For a one-legged rancher, he's a tough son of a....

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2014)

James Magnold's "3:10 to Yuma" stars Christian Bale as Dan Evans, a struggling farmer who agrees to escort gang leader Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a nearby train station. Wade is to be transported to prison. His men are determined to prevent this.
Magnold's film is both a remake of a 1957 classic, and an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard short story. Unlike previous incarnations of this tale, though, Magnold portrays Dan Evans as a down on his luck farmer. With one bad leg, a farm in ruins, a sick child and a lifetime of misfortune, Dan's the quintessential underdog. Tired of the world spitting on him, Dan embarks on a noble quest; he will get Wade to his destination. Nothing will stop him. He will be a hero.
The majority of "3:10" contrasts the morality, integrity and family life of Dan with the brutality, barbarism and lawlessness of Wade. Indeed, at first glance it appears that Wade is subtly corrupting Dan's family. He's the archetypal outsider, weaselling his way into Dan's life with the intention of seducing any and everyone. "Walk in my shoes," Wade whispers.
As the film progresses, though, it becomes apparent that it is Dan who is in fact leading Wade into temptation. Longing for a family of his own (he was abandoned by his mother and he pines for a young barmaid), and slowly growing sympathetic to Dan's own plight, Wade thus gradually shifts from outlaw to hero. Ironically, he does this all out of a moral desire to mythologise and make a hero of – and so save – Dan.
And so "3:10 to Yuma" (both versions) boasts one of the strangest final acts in the history of Westerns. Here, Wade picks up his sick-shooters and joins Dan in a battle against Wade's own henchmen. Both films then end with Wade imprisoned, having assisted the very man assigned to put him in a cage. He's completed his transformation from an outside (outlaw) to an insider (farmer), though the film's final shot suggests that this transformation is short-lived.
Magnold's script occasionally has good chunks of dialogue ("Squeezing that watch won't stop time", "I've been standing on one leg for three damn years waiting for God to do me a favour... but he ain't listening"). For the most part, though, Magnold's dialogue is poor (he can't capture the blunt, macho poetry of Leonard) and he squanders very good ideas which weren't part of the original stories. And despite a strong last-act, "3:10 to Yuma" is poorly shot and poorly cast. Their bodies forged by modern gym routines and their inflections copied from cinema's past tough guys, Bale and Crowe never convince as 19th century frontiersmen.
7/10 - See "Hombre", "Ride with the Devil" and "Bad Company" (1972).