10 Movie Remakes That Are Actually Worth Watching
5. 3:10 To Yuma
The Original: Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, 3:10 To Yuma is one of the best Westerns of the 1950s. A small time farmer (Van Heflin) winds up being tasked with ensuring that Glenn Ford’s captured outlaw leader is put on the eponymous train, unaware Ford’s gang are prepared to stop him.
The Remake: Bigger, bolder and with a different ending, this new version packs in four towering performances from Christian Bale as the farmer, Russell Crowe as the scripture-quoting villain, Peter Fonda as a bounty hunter and Ben Foster as one of Crowe’s henchmen.
This is a good old-fashioned Western, one of the best of 2000s, full of a-man’s-gotta-do-what-a-man’s-gotta-do heroism, but it takes the time to develop its characters so that they never come across as stick figures. The director is James Mangold (Copland, The Wolverine), who’s an old hand at action, so even when the going gets rough you can always tell what’s happening.
When The Magnificent Seven opens, it’ll be interesting to stack Mangold’s picture alongside Antoine Fuqua’s reboot and see which comes off as the better movie.