TIME TO RETURN TO 'YUMA' CROWE AND BALE SHOOT FROM THE HIP ABOUT SADDLING UP FOR REMAKE.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM WRITER

So few Westerns are made anymore that, given the chance to, why would anybody remake an earlier horse opera?

Especially one such as "3:10 to Yuma," a talky, 1957 film starring Glenn Ford that few people have heard of. And those who have are about evenly split as to whether it was above average or just kind of dull.

"I really wanted to make a Western, and I really loved this story," explains director James Mangold. He started rewriting Halsted Welles' original "Yuma" script, which was adapted from an Elmore Leonard short story, in 2002.

But even with Tom Cruise attached to play manipulative villain Ben Wade for a while, and after Mangold's own success with the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line," he could not find a major studio that wanted to invest in a Western.

Mangold eventually got the film financed independently, and convinced Russell Crowe to play Wade and Christian Bale to take on the role of Dan Evans (played by Van Heflin in '57), a financially strapped local rancher who escorts the dangerous outlaw to a train station against enormous obstacles and odds.

"The themes that I find really profound, I sensed had more to explore," Mangold says. "In my head, I saw a way to take the original and kind of overlay ideas about the Transcontinental Railroad and, also, fathers and sons, and to try to get inside Dan Evans a little bit more -- why he was so hesitant and nervous."

While original "Yuma" director Delmer Daves isn't usually considered one of them, some of the greatest Western-makers of the same era -- Howard Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann -- explored comparable thematic territory over and over again, when they weren't outright restaging their own classics such as "Rio Bravo" and "Seven Men From Now."

For Crowe, who owns a working cattle ranch in Australia, reprising a role that Glenn Ford made famous was a chance to do something similar.

"I'm very familiar with the movie," the New Zealand-born actor says. "I've seen it a number of times, liked it a lot.

"What makes the original work and what makes this work is the central relationship. You watch it build and you watch the two characters begin to have a grudging respect for each other."

Welshman Bale is far less of a Western buff. He didn't read the original story or watch the first film until after reading the remake's script, which is credited to Welles (from whom lines and some scenes are taken wholesale) and the team of Michael Brandt and Derek Haas ("2 Fast 2 Furious").

"Because I had such little knowledge about the original, I never really felt like we were making a remake," Bale notes. "The short story is really quite different, has Dan being a deputy or something, and really just takes place in a hotel room. They expanded it somewhat for the first movie, and then we opened it up even more."

In fact, Mangold, Brandt and Haas added a whole new act. In the original movie, set in Arizona, Wade is caught in Bisbee. Then the next thing you know, he and Evans are cooling their heels in a Contention honeymoon suite, waiting for the Yuma train to arrive while Wade's gang gathers outside.

The new version spends a good deal of time on the ride from Bisbee to Contention, as Wade and Evans and some newly added characters reveal more about themselves and experience a lot more action, an element noticeably limited in the first film.

"In the original, it seemed to me that Bisbee and Contention were 10 minutes apart," observes Peter Fonda, who plays a newly added Pinkerton agent in the remake.

"But because Jim Mangold took this journey where all this stuff happened that was not in the original, it gave us the ability to delve into the story and into life. I think journeys are very important in Westerns. 'The Searchers'; 'Red River'; my film, 'The Hired Hand'; they were all about these journeys."

"I think a big reason why Jim was interested in hiring us was that we did have a modern sensibility and we had ideas for the middle part of the movie that were action-oriented, pushed it forward and were plot-driven, that weren't in the original," writer Brandt reckons.

"So the idea was that we're not just going to remake a movie, it was we're going to add a new chapter that, hopefully, answers some questions and has a new and different excitement to it."

The horse trek also allows Evans' older son, William (Logan Lerman), who was written out of the first film as soon as his dad left their homestead, to tag along. This enabled one of the remake's "modern" themes: William resents his loser father something fierce, and admires the charming, successful and -- even when handcuffed -- seemingly free-spirited Wade.

"By enhancing the role of the boy, I wanted to explore how fascinated we are, especially as young men, by things that are bad," Mangold says.

"Here is a father whose son doesn't respect him," adds Brandt. "A rock star gunslinger moves into town. He represents the devil in the father's eyes, and it's kind of a battle over the son's soul."

In the end, Mangold seems to consider the remake question something of a fightin'-

words proposition. He can't deny that that's what he's done with "3:10 to Yuma." But you'd better appreciate what else he's done with it, pardner.

"The tricky thing for me about the word remake -- and I embrace it, we are a remake in that sense -- is that when you make the third 'Hamlet,' is that a remake or are you just going back to the text?" the director suggests.

"I think Halsted Welles' script and that film and Elmore's story are really profound. And part of what seems to be kind of dishonest lately is that sometimes people will make a version of a film that they really admire, only they'll change things because they don't want it to be called a remake. They'll make 'The Searchers' or 'Shane' or 'Rear Window' in a different setting.

"There's a part of me that thinks, why the hell not just make it?"

Well, because then it's too easy to accuse you of lacking originality. Or going for a fast buck -- which, ironically, is a core issue both versions of "3:10 to Yuma" examine in depth.

"There are remakes in the cynical sense where you know they're taking a '70s TV series, they're throwing a bunch of expensive stars in it, and they know they'll have a good opening weekend because they have a brand that everyone remembers from when they were 13 and watching television," Mangold points out.

"I've got none of those advantages. I've got a movie that nobody's ever heard of. I've got a genre that studios fear no one wants to see anymore. The only reason to do it is because I love the text. So instead of changing the name or moving things around, I said, 'Let's do this text again.' "

Bob Strauss [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Taking aim

Modern themes update '3:10 to Yuma'

(3) Christian Bale, second from left, Russell Crowe, center, and Peter Fonda, second from right, have a train to catch in the remake of the 1957 Western "3:10 to Yuma."

(4 -- 5) Russell Crowe, above left, plays bad guy Ben Wade in the remake of "3:10 to Yuma." Christian Bale, left, with Gretchen Mol, plays Dan Evans, a financially strapped rancher who is supposed to escort Crowe's character to justice.