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“3:10 to Yuma” is an actors’ showcase set in the old west, which is never the recipe for box office success but can lead to good cinema. Too bad it doesn’t. Flat, not involving and a relative bore, director James Mangold’s (“Walk the Line”) film flutters during supposed dramatic high points and ends in a way that will have western purists crying blasphemy.
Christian Bale is Dan Evans, a weak-willed family man and Civil War veteran who’s facing foreclosure on his home and is losing the respect of his wife (Gretchen Mol) and oldest son (Logan Lerman, an emerging talent). After a nearby stagecoach is robbed by Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his gang, Wade spends too much time gallivanting with a local barmaid (Vinessa Shaw) and is captured by a group of men that includes Dan.
Tired of getting robbed, railroad representative Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts) offers $200 to volunteers who help transport Wade to the city of Contention, where they can put him on the 3:10 train to Yuma, where prison awaits. Dan accepts, along with a crusty old cowboy (a solid Peter Fonda), a veterinarian (Alan Tudyk), and others. Wade warns that his men will come after him, and sure enough his #2, Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), has Wade’s posse in hot pursuit.
Bale offers the same coy, embattled innocence that made him a success as Bruce Wayne in “Batman Begins,” but adds an old west code of honor that forces him to be brave in the face of imminent danger. Evans is clearly not a courageous man, and watching Bale buck up the strength to face the grave standoff is a study in somber yet effective acting. As Wade, Crowe has more fun as he gets to be cunning and devious while maintaining a certain charm that keeps him likeable.
Unfortunately the movie doesn’t have more to offer. Based on an Elmore Leonard short story and the 1957 western starring Glenn Ford (Wade) and Van Heflin (Evans), Mangold’s version never flashes with the vitality or tension needed to make it resonate. The reason is a lack of urgency: the two-hour rendering doesn’t build its drama as much as it plods along with an action sequence occasionally thrown in to keep our attention. We want to be worried for Evans and wonder about Wade, and be held in white-knuckle suspense as the story rises to a climax. But the journey is so drawn out that your mind wanders and starts thinking about Bale’s new “Batman” movie (which he’s currently shooting) and Crowe and Denzel Washington in “American Gangster” (due this fall).
After the success of “Walk the Line” Mangold had the power to choose his next project, and one can’t blame him for remaking one of his personal favorites. The fact that this is often a bad idea (for evidence see Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of “Psycho,” the first movie he made after “Good Will Hunting”) seems to have eluded Mangold, and he’s ironically made a movie that lacks the spirit and energy that originally inspired him.
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