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'3:10 to Yuma'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

September 7, 2007

The clock in the old Western town tolls three times, signaling the long-awaited moment when a crippled rancher must escort an unrepentant villain to the train station to catch a 3:10 out of town. We take a deep breath, girding ourselves for the violent denouement to follow and sighing for a day when one could head to the platform 10 minutes before the scheduled departure, confident in the expectation that an inter-city train was actually going to arrive on time.

Some of us may also heave a sigh for the heyday of the Western, a popular art form so quintessentially American (and suddenly so of-the-moment) that the two plummiest roles in "3:10 to Yuma" have been outsourced to foreign-born actors. Not just any foreign-born actors, but Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, artists who have devoted a considerable portion of their careers to the reinvention and replenishment of Hollywood genre films. At this stage of their game, they speak American better than you and me.

It has been a half century since "3:10 to Yuma" was first adapted for the screen from a story by Elmore Leonard. Like many of us who have reached our 50th year, it has put on a bit of fat around the middle: The Delmer Daves original was a tight 92 minutes; the new version from "Walk the Line" director James Mangold weighs in at a heftier 1:57. But it moves like a barn on fire, which is the incendiary event that sets the story in motion.

The flaming building belongs to Bale's Dan Evans, a struggling Arizona rancher who has had to cede too much of his land to encroaching railroad interests in order to feed his cattle and family of four. A onetime sharpshooter inhibited by an injury from his Union Army days, Evans is no match for arsonists deployed by the train barons to send him a message to vacate.

Wiped out by the fire, Evans accepts an offer from the very powers that have been harrassing him to see a recently captured outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe) to the town of Contention, where a train will spirit him to justice. Motivating Evans as much as the promise of compensation is the chance to square himself with his disillusioned 14-year-old son (Logan Lerman).

Evans has his work cut out for him. Lying in wait are Apaches and Wade's gang, comandeered in Wade's absence by the trigger-happy Charlie Prince (Ben Foster). In lieu of a trained force to back him up, Evans is saddled with a loose-lipped bounty hunter (Peter Fonda), a congenial veterinarian (Alan Tudyk) and a railroad representative, Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts), as la-di-da as his name.

Evans' greatest obstacle is the wormy verbal agility of Wade, who disarms his captors with a manipulative menu of psychology, insult and Scriptures. Crowe aces this part of the assignment - he's a past master at the art of slippery seduction - but even Crowe's mellifluous purr can't help us understand how Wade is able to render everyone around him so impotent that they can't just shove a bandana in his mouth.

It's one of those only-in-the-movies illogicalities that you just have to go with, along with a climactic turnabout that's long on poetic justice and preciously short on sense. When that clock strikes three, you can feel grateful for the great ride you had before "3:10 to Yuma" veers off like the inept train service it heralds, chugging to a halt in points commonly known as hell in a handbasket.

3:10 TO YUMA (R). Russell Crowe and Christian Bale do a swell job of subverting classic images of evil and good in a Western remake that boasts as much gray area as blue sky. Falls apart in the final clinch, but you may not care by that point. Director James Mangold keeps it moving. 1:57 (violence and some language). At area theaters.