Changing Places, Western Style

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good old-fashioned Western this side of “Brokeback Mountain.� Just as the summer blockbuster season winds down, “3:10 to Yuma� comes riding into town, guns blazing — literally.

There must be more discharging firearms in this flick than on a Smith and Wesson test range, and a body count to rival Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven.�

Call this movie “Forgiven.� The plot, based on an Elmore Leonard short story, is meant, more than anything, as a character study. Good-guy rancher and family man Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and black-clad baddie Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) are thrown together after Evans accidentally witnesses a stagecoach heist by Wade’s gang, and then again when Evans agrees to accompany a party with the captive Wade to convey him to the titular prison train.

Over the course of two hours (in movie time), the moral ambiguities between good and evil are explored in rather tedious dialogues punctuated by attempted escapes, chases, bloody beatings and gun battles. By the end of the movie, we are to believe, the two men have merged into one, maybe even changed places, ethically speaking.

By bringing together two of Hollywood’s hottest commodities for the first time, director James Mangold (“Girl, Interrupted�) fills the screen with high-octane testosterone and pulls off the equivalent of that opening stagecoach raid. (Indeed, “3:10� opened at number one in the box office this week.) Crowe and Bale must have studied at the same acting school: the Academy of Extremely Understated Machismo, where out-muttering and out-staring your opponent substitute for actual character development.

The New Zealand-born Crowe — a perfectly appealing action figure in movies such as “Gladiator,� as well as a thoughtful actor in the likes of “A Brilliant Mind� — seems out of place and time here, while also struggling with a Western drawl. The Bale of Wales, another action hero (“Batman Begins�), fares better, though there’s only so much baleful glaring one can take (sorry, but it’s true).

Also on hand in all-too-brief appearances are Peter Fonda as a bounty hunter and Gretchen Mol as Evans’ wife. Logan Lerman has a meatier role as Evans’ older son, who gets the chance to try out his manhood at key moments. He handles it well.

But it’s Ben Foster as Wade’s lieutenant who steals the show. He gives the kind of cold-eyed, menacing, take-no-prisoners performance that every Western needs.

It amazes me that “3:10 to Yuma� has garnered a heap of critical praise. Like the train of the title, it’s a long, noisy ride and puffs a lot of smoke. The movie’s pacing — talk, shoot, talk, shoot — drains it of suspense for the most part, except for the final climactic shootout. And the talk is so sort-of 21st-century psychobabble masquerading as 19th-century sagebrush wisdom that it’s hard to take very seriously.

Aside from the rather inert acting, the movie also suffers from too many logical lapses. There must have been a dozen times I wanted to ask the screen out loud why Wade’s captors couldn’t do a better job guarding him; at every turn, he either slips away or gets close enough to pummel someone. I’ve never seen a more useless pair of handcuffs in my life.

In addition, the setup for the final showdown requires us to believe that Wade’s gang, who has come to liberate him, couldn’t just go in and get the prey, but instead has to wait for them to emerge and flee. Not to mention the probability of  Wade and Evans evading a fusillade of bullets aimed at them by not only the gang, but also the entirety of the townsfolk who have been hastily recruited by the bad guys!

On the other hand, what Western doesn’t like odds such as those?

“3:10 to Yuma� is rated R for violence and some language. It is playing at the Moviehouse in Millerton and at the Cineroms in Winsted and Torrington.