“If you are making a do over,…

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

It’s a makeover of Delmer Daves’ solid but flawed claustrophobic
1957 black-and-white shot Adult Western that starred Glenn Ford and Van
Heflin and was based on Elmore Leonard’s short story, a knockoff of High
Noon. It improved the visuals, added a few modern touches, has a bigger
finger wagging about big business being unethical while keeping it traditionally
old western, and tacked on many bells and whistles; unfortunately it keeps
the same ridiculous risible fairy tale finale of an unbelievable conversion
of a badass cocky criminal gunslinger as the original and runs for some
unneeded reason a half-hour longer. If you are making a do over, at least
correct the original’s faults. James Mangold (”Walk the Line”/”Cop Land”/”Girl,
Interrupted”) offers some unimaginative direction while, to his credit,
he manages to keep it filled with action, always exciting and draws fine
performances from his stars and supporting cast (especially an almost unrecognizable
Peter Fonda as a grizzled gung-ho bounty hunter and Ben Foster as a crazed
trigger-happy outlaw).

Russell Crowe is the notorious black hat wearing outlaw Ben Wade,
who leads a gang of cutthroats who repeatedly rob the Southern Railway’s
cash shipments. Christian Bale plays the decent family man Arizona territory
rancher Dan Evans, married to knockout Alice (Gretchen Mol), who has a
hot-headed 14-year-old son William (Logan Lerman) not respectful of his
ineffectual and devitalized dad and a younger more obedient son Mark. Dan’s
in debt because of the drought and is about to lose his ranch to the amoral
deed-holder Hollander, who hires thugs to burn down his barn and aims to
sell the land for a handsome profit to the capitalist pig railroad he’s
in cahoots with. The embittered former Union soldier sharpshooter lost
one leg during the war and was paid off with $200, as that sum of money
will later be used as a symbolic amount that people are willing to pay
to walk away from their problems. 

Following basically the same plotlines as the original, Ben is captured
in Bisbee after his gang robs the Gatlin gun toting stagecoach box of cash
and murders all the Pinkertons but for the shot in the gut Byron McElroy
(Peter Fonda). The railroad organizes a group of volunteer deputies to
take their valued prisoner to nearby Contention, where they will put the
outlaw aboard the 3:10 train to the federal pen at Yuma. Dan volunteers
to be a deputy because he’s hungry for the $200 paid by the railroad, and
sees this as the way to keep his ranch. But it’s a dangerous assignment,
as Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) and the bad boys vow to free Ben at all
costs and the escort service must try to elude them by going through hostile
Apache territory and then through a railroad train track construction tunnel
site where the bosses have no respect for the law. 

The film shoots for some psychological shading by contrasting the
dullish everyman working slob Dan with the successful charismatic sociopath
gang leader Ben, and leads us to believe each has a man-crush on the other
because they both yearn for what the other has: one secretly yearns for
a good family life and the other to be a heroic and respected figure in
his community. It also tries to point out that the biggest villain is not
the gang leader but the unscrupulous railroad, as represented by a two-faced
railroad agent named Mr. Butterfield (Dallas Roberts). 

It breathtakingly takes us to a familiar destination, but gains nothing
by upping the body count and by having its good guy rancher being such
an unbending man of principles that it’s not a reach to find him more nutso
than sane.