3:10 to Yuma

Trains play a key role in several important Westerns, including John Ford's silent epic The Iron Horse, High Noon (which is when the gunmen shooting for Gary Cooper are due in town), and Once Upon a Time in the West.

In 3:10 to Yuma (first filmed with Van Heflin and Glenn Ford in 1958), the title refers to the train which will transport Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the state penitentiary. Only problem being, even in handcuffs Wade is none too cooperative, and there's every chance his gang of desperados will attempt to free him from his captors.

It's a strange fight for a rancher to get mixed up in. But Dan Evans (Christian Bale) desperately needs the reward money. He's crippled with debt, and crippled physically, too, a war wound from the times gone by. Offered $200 to put Wade on the train, he strikes out with a makeshift posse that includes a veterinarian (Alan Tudyk), a wounded Pinkerton's operative (Peter Fonda) and a railway representative (Dallas Roberts).

Their chances hinge on a ploy to send Wade's gang on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction. But the plan only buys them some time. Meanwhile the imperturbable outlaw is slowly but surely evening the odds, killing two men and whittling away at the others' piece of mind.

Crowe plays Wade very gently. He's a man utterly at ease with himself, commanding and confident no matter that he spends much of the picture in chains. He's charming but utterly ruthless.

By contrast, Christian Bale's rancher is still striving to prove something, to his contemptuous teenage boy (Logan Lerman), and to himself. He may occupy the moral high ground, but most often he's the one picking himself out of the dust.

Adapted from an early short story by Elmore Leonard, 3:10 to Yuma strikes a fair balance between physical action and psychological warfare, but always at its core is the question of how we are to measure these two men.

Director James Mangold has made this film before ' or one very like it. The police thriller Copland was basically a Western in New Jersey, with Sylvester Stallone as the honest, inadequate small town sheriff and Harvey Keitel as the corrupt, capable NYPD detective. In these two movies, integrity is another kind of handicap.

3:10 to Yuma is the better of the two. The story is more muscular and direct, and the shading is more artful. The picture topped the US box office charts for a couple of weeks earlier this month ' a considerable achievement for a Western, and a tribute to the combined drawing power of Messrs Crowe and Bale, two of our best actors. (In a shrewdly cast film, Peter Fonda and rising star Ben Foster also make strong impressions.)

Even so, Mangold has a job creating a satisfying, redemptive resolution. If the ending works it's on the basis that these two very different men recognize and respond to an unlikely kinship; the shame of a father; the pain of a son. Is that enough to redeem a killer? I didn't believe it but I wanted to. I suspect James Mangold would say the same.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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