Read this review here or at the new Scene-Stealers 2.0!!*1/2The western genre has been pretty dormant since its decades-long heyday ended in the 1970s. A quick count shows that less than 10 westerns have been made in Hollywood since 2000, and that’s counting Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson’s bumbling comedy “Shanghai Noon.” For director James Mangold, making the traditional outlaw western “3:10 to Yuma” was a gamble, even with a bankable star like Russell Crowe. What Mangold had crafted is like a classic western in theme, but it resembles a modern movie in its pace and its complicated, multi-layered characterizations. Casting Crowe was not only a good move for better box office, but it gives the movie a huge dose of rugged charm. Christian Bale does his usual fine job playing Dan Evans, a stubbornly principled Civil War veteran, but Crowe gives notorious criminal Ben Wade an odd sort of nobility that would seem to counteract his reputation.!Mangold is a big fan of the 1957 “3:10 to Yuma,” which starred Van Heflin and Glenn Ford in the Bale and Crowe roles, respectively. That film was adapted from a bare bones 17-page short story published by Elmore Leonard in 1953. This newer, flashier version retains the spirit of that story, while Michael Brandt and Derek Haas’s screenplay (with credit to original screenwriter Halstead Welles as well) expands the scope and characters of the original film to make it more morally complex.When a powerful local businessman burns down Dan’s barn and scatters his herd, the married father of two rides into town to stand up for himself. When he runs into the Wade Gang, fresh from a particularly violent coach robbery, Ben recognizes Dan’s virtuous side and lets he and his boys pass without harm. Ben’s curiosity about the rancher gets him into trouble, however, when he is captured on a fluke for staying in a conversation with him for too long.Dan’s desperation to save his family causes him to join up with the same thugs who are muscling him out. For $200, he agrees to be part of the posse transporting the fugitive outlaw to Contention, where Ben will board a train to Yuma and await trial. The journey is Along the way, these two enemies will discover they have more in common than they might have thought at first.It is a staple of the genre to have two men with few philosophical differences on opposite sides of the law, but almost every character in “3:10 to Yuma” is separated by that fine line. Peter Fonda is in fierce self-righteous form as grizzled bounty hunter Byron McElroy, a man paid by the bank to protect their money. Ben accuses him of slaughtering innocent women and children in a raid, but Byron defends his actions in the name of justice. Dan finds himself riding with one of the men who burned down his barn, a situation that his son Will (Logan Lerman) cannot comprehend. One effective subplot looks at Dan’s past compromises to support his family through the eyes of young Will, who views his father as weak. The boy has a secret admiration for the infamous Ben Wade, though, who tries to pass himself off as a gentleman with a very straightforward code of honor. Will is dazzled by Ben’s enigmatic personality and sees some of the traits in the bandit that he wishes his father had.!In turn, Ben admires Dan’s courage in impossible circumstances. Dan has plenty of moments of self-doubt, fueled in no small part by the quick-witted mockery directed at him by Ben. He may be a murderous psychopath, but Ben fancies himself an intellectual, using cherry-picked Bible quotes and a troubled past to justify his version of morality.Next to Dan, the most loyal person in the movie is Ben’s right hand man, Charlie Prince (played with a hint of homoerotic undertone by an electrifying Ben Foster). The dandy in dirt-stained white leather tails the dwindling group from afar, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. “3:10 to Yuma” strikes a good balance between the Old West of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood’s revisionist western “Unforgiven.” Some scenes were obviously thrown into the movie to beef up the action quotient, but Mangold keeps them moving with fast-paced editing and jerky point-of-view camera movement. There are plenty of gunfights and the body count is surprisingly high, although Mangold does not fetishize the gore quite like “The Wild Bunch” director Sam Peckinpah did. He has an eye on telling a more traditional tale of honor in the Old West, and with the help of some great casting and the right mix of new cynicism, he succeeds.