Interview. James Mangold and Peter Fonda.

"Andrew Sarris once wrote about the 'bread-and-butter' Western and the 'blue ribbon' Western," writes Jeffrey M Anderson at his excellent site, Combustible Celluloid. "The latter, ultra-serious example tried to make the Western more important by adding outside elements, but at the same time it sapped all the fun and very nearly killed the genre. Now James Mangold has brought it back with this strapping 'bread and butter' example."

Not only does Jeffrey give the new 3:10 to Yuma 3½ stars out of 4, he also tips his hat to one of its stars, Peter Fonda, whose The Hired Hand is "one of the best Westerns of the 1970s." Now, at the main site, he talks with Mangold and Fonda about their lively takes on the genre.

Earlier: "3:10 to Yuma" and "More on 3:10 to Yuma."

Updates, 9/10: "The best of the old westerns were dense with psychosexual implication and political subtext," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Often dismissed, then and now, as naïve celebrations of dubious ideals, they were in many ways more sophisticated than their self-consciously critical (or 'revisionist') heirs. And the new 3:10 to Yuma even in its efforts to stick to the old ways (apart from some obligatory post-Deadwood cussing), is neither spare nor suggestive enough. It lacks the confidence to distinguish between touchstones and clichés."

Also, Ben Foster "plays another young villain so well that he becomes the movie's third star," writes Karen Durbin.

"In 3:10 to Yuma director James Mangold has made himself a grand Western," writes the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle. "[T]he new film lacks the self-conscious modernism of most Westerns of the past generation, such as Unforgiven, TV's Deadwood or Sergio Leone's movies. The modern influences are there, in its harsh language and realistic violence, but there's no sense of straining for effect. It just tells a story and, seemingly incidentally - though no movie can be this good by accident - it achieves an elusive mythic quality."

Time's Richard Schickel isn't buying into comparisons with Unforgiven: "Mangold's offering lacks the blackness and absurdity of Clint Eastwood's great film. It is more in the vein of Anthony Mann's westerns of the 1950s - trim, efficiently paced, full of briskly stated conflicts that edge up to the dark side, but never fully embrace it. That's quite all right."

"So what are the odds we'd get two westerns opening in one week?" asks Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "Even more amazingly, two really terrific westerns? But here they are: Exiled and 3:10 to Yuma."

"[W]hat's most impressive about this new version, starring Russell Crowe as a charismatic outlaw and Christian Bale as the downtrodden rancher who crosses his path, is that James Mangold directs it with such energy and passion that it's as if he didn't know it's all been done before," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

"Crowe has a gift for such roles, for locating tender spots in the hardest of men, and his performance in 3:10 to Yuma enticingly (if rather perversely) elevates villainy to something approaching heroism," writes the New Republic's Christopher Orr.

"Overall, the picture is accomplished, intelligent and, in places, a little dull," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "And yet somehow, maybe just barely, Mangold... succeeds on his own terms, largely because the actors he's working with here, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, so comfortably inhabit the movie, and the genre that cradles it."

"3:10 to Yuma has its off moments, and its unexplored potential, but for the vast majority of its running time, this is an excellently made and superbly acted throwback," writes Bill Gibron at PopMatters.

Update, 9/14: Crowe "turns the idea of having so few emotions—of being beyond caring—into a bloody joke," writes David Edelstein in New York. "He upstages everyone with his laughing eyes."

Posted by dwhudson at September 7, 2007 9:06 AM