Not great western

3:10 to Yuma has everything you might want from a western apart from anything original or interesting, and as for Russell Crowe, he’s actually pretty crap. Obviously, I can’t say what the director, James Mangold (Walk the Line), who apparently fought hard to make this project, was thinking of. What shopping to get in on his way home? Do we need milk? Cat food?

But the result is both dull and deeply unnecessary; a stinker. This is a remake of the 1957 film of the same name (starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin) and while life is too short to get all het up about remakes — there is nothing holy about old films; it’s not like drawing a moustache on the ‘Mona Lisa’ — what is the point, if you can’t re-frame it in some new way for a fresh audience? Hairspray, for example, did that quite wonderfully. But here the script is so out-dated and passé there’s barely a line that doesn’t go not just to the brink of cliché, but also well over it and on to the next brink. I’ve rarely witnessed so many clichés tumbling over brinks. It’s not Apaches you have to watch out for here, it’s phrases so well worn they almost have holes in the knees. One character even says, after being shot and getting up again, because this was a time when men were men, ‘I rode into this town, so I will ride out of it again.’ OK. Suit yourself. No need to make a big thing about it.

Adapted from a short story by Elmore Leonard, this is about Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a desperate, crippled rancher who accepts $200 to help escort notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe) to the town of Contention where the 3.10