A lot to Crowe about

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2007)

Don't generally get no westerns no more so I guess, when one rides into town, I'm gonna mosey on down and check it out.
Now there have been so many westerns in the history of the cinema that it's impossible for a new one not to be derivative and "3:10" is self evidently so, both in being based on a 1953 short story by Elmore Leonard and being a remake of the 1957 movie of the same title starring Glenn Ford in the lead role. There are obvious echoes of "High Noon" in the cowardice of all but one man to do the right thing and of "Shane" in a boy finding inspiration in a cowboy's courage.
So, if the trail is so well-trodden, why go there? It's partly the joy of the western itself: those terrains, those outfits and - above all - those guns (and here, when shots ring out, they RING out). It's partly the more nuanced character of the main protagonist: the outlaw Ben Wade who is cunning, ruthless and real fast with a pistol, but knows his Bible, can sketch a sensitive drawing, and is polite to the women folk. Above all it's the fine acting, mainly from the charismatic Russell Crowe as the leader of the gang and Christian Bale as the rancher Dan Evans who is determined to get him on that train, but also from various support performances including the veteran Peter Fonda as a bounty hunter endlessly on Wade's trail and Ben Foster as Wade's psychopathic second-in-command.
The very final sequence is too light-hearted for the 122 minutes that have preceded it but, that apart, this is a fine western that manages to combine both exciting action and character delineation in a work that will further enhance the reputation of director James Mangold who did so well with "Walk The Line".