‘3:10 to Yuma’ goes off the tracks

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

Illogic and grim nonsense rule the day in “3:10 to Yuma.”

Oh, this remake of a 1957 B-grade black-and-white oater starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin is handsome enough. I’ll give it that.

Filmed in scenic Western settings with Hollywood heavyweights Russell Crowe and Christian Bale heading the cast and with everyone bearded and booted and hatted and armed to the incisors with everything from six-guns to Gatling guns, “Yuma” looks like Serious Cowboy Business all the way.

But how seriously can you take a picture where Peter Fonda, playing a gnarly bounty hunter, is plugged in the guts at point-blank range by a snarly bad guy played by Ben Foster and does not die?

Not only does Fonda not die, but no sooner is the .45 slug yanked from his innards by a rusty set of pliers, and with zero recovery time, he rises to his feet, then walks, then rides, then stomps the stuffings out of Crowe in one of many scenes of extravagant brutality.

All that, and with barely a wince. Not even Clint Eastwood in his Man with No Name heyday was that tough.

So, OK. It’s a movie. Unbelievable things always happen in movies. Yeah, but “Yuma” wants to impress us with its hard-bitten realism. Yet time and again director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) tosses logic to the winds in ways that sabotage the picture’s pretensions of seriousness.

And now, a quick quiz: You’re a small group of white interlopers deep in Indian country. It’s night. You’ve got a cozy little campfire going. Suddenly, Apache riflemen start spraying your encampment with hot lead. Do you:

(A) Hightail it into the rocks and return fire from under cover of darkness?

(B) Stay huddled and highlighted in the fire’s revealing glow and shoot back?

If you chose (B), congratulations. You’ve got the makings of a big-time filmmaker.

And don’t even get me started on the subject of the picture’s climactic shootout.

Not wishing to be a spoiler here, but let me just say the big-bang finish is nothing short of nutty in its mind-blowing lack of logic. Tables are turned for barely fathomable reasons and who winds up getting shot by whom is likely to leave you gasping a crucial question. Which is: “Whaa? Did what just happened really happen?”

Up until that climax, “Yuma” has Bale, in the role of a hard-up Arizona rancher, enlisting in a dangerous mission to deliver a prisoner, ruthless killer Crowe, to the 3:10 p.m. train that will haul him off to Yuma prison and the gallows. Gutshot Fonda is another member of the escort party.

Crowe’s cohorts ride into the town of Contention, where the train station is, to see to it that their boss doesn’t get onboard. And if they have to kill anyone who looks cross-eyed at them to achieve that end, then hey, so much the better.

The script, adapted and updated (which is to say made more violent) from a short story by Elmore Leonard and the original “Yuma” script by Halsted Welles, places Bale’s rancher in an ethical quandary. He takes the escort job for the money, which will allow him pay his debts and keep his ranch. But he’s ultimately left to do the job alone. And when Crowe then offers him $1,000 to let him walk away, Bale is left with a choice: Take the cash and skedaddle and survive, or run with his prisoner through a gantlet of gunmen to the train to see that the killer gets his just deserts.

Crowe, in the role originated by Glenn, is a charismatic manipulator. He seeks to undermine Bale in the eyes of his teenage son (Logan Lerman) by emphasizing the contrast between the outlaw’s glamorous image and the rancher’s hand-to-mouth existence. And he keeps prodding Bale to examine his motives for sticking with a mission that seems increasingly suicidal.

Crowe combines charm and callousness with seamless ease, and is by far the best thing in the picture. As the conflicted hero, Bale appears to be struggling to find the proper tone to play the character.

As was the case in “Walk the Line” and his earlier “Copland,” Mangold brings little nuance and less fervor to his work. With him at the throttle, “Yuma” clatters noisily along, lurching now and again as its characters behave in unbelievable ways until it finally flies off the rails during its final nonsensical shootout.

3:10 to Yuma

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda and Gretchen Mol

Running Time: 1:57

Rating: R; language, violence