For the opening weekend of Logan, I initially figured I’d simply link to the consideration of the old Wolverine limited series that I wrote for Spectrum Culture ages ago. For reasons I still can’t pin down, this “Revisit” piece was by far my most widely praised contribution to that site. Then I remembered I also have a stray review of a film by James Mangold, director of Logan, hanging out at my former online home, just waiting to get transferred over.

I’ve spent quite some time trying to figure out how to approach the review of the new film 3:10 To Yuma. It’s not that I’m especially conflicted about it or that I find the film so drab that it’s had to conjure up a big batch of words about it (this certainly happens from time to time). Instead, I kept coming back to a single observation that can be applied redundantly to several principle collaborators. So, in the spirit of another regular feature ’round these here parts, I offer to you…

Five Contributors To 3:10 To Yuma Who Seem Especially Well-Suited To Westerns

1. Russell Crowe. The combative Aussie thespian has long been hit-or-miss for me, far more than most actors with similarly serious reputations and extensive acclaim. His self-regard shows up too often in his performances, a seeming personal satisfaction with his command of the craft that oozes through his performances. I watch A Beautiful Mind or Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and see the actorly choices and an accompanying stiffness that I guess others see as something far more transformational. One of his first American films was Sam Raimi’s blissfully bonkers western The Quick and the Dead and none of these shortcomings were apparent there, which I always chalked up to the relative humility of an actor who hadn’t yet broken through with anything approaching permanence. Now I think it may have been the manly restraint of the genre that held him in check (certainly those flaws that rankle me are fully apparent in his other studio film from around that time. He is more willing to subsume himself in the role and let the material come through without his mannered tinkering. It help that any glimpses of egotism nicely fit the character he plays, a legendary outlaw, who finds himself unexpectedly captured after a stagecoach job.

2. Christian Bale. If Crowe tends towards overly fussy work, Bale is in many ways the opposite. He’s an actor that withdraws to the point of disappearing, often flattening his British accent until it is a verbal pattern devoid of any nationality or region. There’s a reason why strapping himself into the batsuit and inhabiting the dehumanized focus of Bruce Wayne was a breakthrough performance for him. As a failing rancher who finds some sort of personal redemption in his part in capturing the storied villain and delivering him to the long train track of the law, Bale settles into the character’s hesitancy and restraint. There’s a coldness and focus that feels right on the hard, baked dust of the plains, and the freedom from the need for bold outward gestures lets Bale do what he does best, signal the inner conflicts and wounds of his character.

3. James Mangold. The director of Walk the Line has spent ten years churning out sturdy enough films for about a decade, following up the heartfelt stillness of his indie debut Heavy with a series of endeavors that always seem to promise a little more than they deliver (for awhile Entertainment Weekly could be counted on to tout each developing project as a surefire Oscar contender that every actor in town wanted to dive into). Mangold is a solid craftsman, but hasn’t ever brought real fire to a project. That very sturdiness free of flash is a perfect match for Mangold’s stalwart camera. The most grounded of filmmakers meets the most grounded of genres and the results are, as might be expected, deeply satisfying.

4. Ben Foster. Foster is a good actor in a moviemaking world stripped of roles that benefit from his fervent invention. Here he plays one of the more off-kilter members of the criminal gang intent on freeing their former boss before his placed on the titular train to prison. It’s not necessarily a great performance, but it’s a fearless one, feathered with colorful details and carefully warped line readings. And yet he keeps it grounded enough that key moments of recognition or tethered thought processes are right in character.

5. Elmore Leonard. While I’ve read some of the punchy works of the author, I’ve missed the westerns from early in his career. Of course his work is right at home: the precise, piercing dialogue placed in the mouths of men who feel the effort and ease of being men with every step, laced with dry humor that is black as campfire coffee. I don’t know if the strained character shift in the closing act is his doing or some sort of Hollywood invention, but the closing moments seem purely a product of his typewriter. And, like most work that bears his literary signature, it is a pleasure to take in.