Pale Rider: just a pale imitation of Shane. Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar
The western, casually dismissed as dead by director Ridley Scott, is currently riding high. But I'm in two minds about the current US box-office champ 3:10 to Yuma, which opens in the UK tomorrow. On the plus side, it's got decent stars (Christian Bale and Russell Crowe), a fine director in James Mangold (Walk the Line) and a script derived from a short story by the great Elmore Leonard.
But then Leonard's story, which follows a deputy marshal and a prisoner holed up in a small town awaiting the titular train, has of course been brought to the screen before. This year marks the 50th birthday of the original 3:10 to Yuma, which boasted its own decent stars (Van Heflin wearing the badge, Glenn Ford as the baddie) and a fine director in Delmer Daves.
I first heard about Mangold's remake during Elmore Leonard's NFT interview last year, accompanied by a screening of the original Yuma. The ever-dry Dutch didn't seem particularly excited by the news of the remake. And if Daves' film ain't broke, don't fix it goes a predictable cry from the nay-sayers. The original Yuma is strong on suspense, with compelling performances, but even feels derivative itself - the film's against-the-clock structure echoes High Noon and, a couple of years after Yuma, Last Train from Gun Hill played a similar game.
I can't help but see the remake of 3:10 to Yuma as a step backwards - and it's a bit disheartening to see it open in the US alongside another remake, Rob Zombie's Halloween. Some of the best westerns have told us more about the time in which they were made rather than the wild west - whether it be Vietnam (Little Big Man, Ulzana's Raid) or 1950s Commie-fearing America (High Noon). But Leonard's lean (24-page) story is pure pulp, so it will be interesting to see if Mangold decides to add any comment on the current American climate in his version. John Patterson failed to find any, and has called for some western remakes with a modern-day political resonance.
I'm also worried that the new Yuma faces a peculiar western remake curse. Let's get this straight ... There are many great westerns that rework films from another genre - hats off to Akira Kurosawa for inspiring not only Fistful of Dollars, but also The Magnificent Seven (with Yojimbo and Seven Samurai respectively). Westerns have also been remade as films that unfold far from the tumbleweed-strewn plains. Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo is an entertaining enough (if strangely smug) cowboy yarn, but John Carpenter trumped it with his urban-thriller remake Assault on Precinct 13.
But while lots of oaters skilfully pay homage to past horse operas (Once Upon a Time in the West is a virtual greatest hits tribute to the genre), westerns never seem to fare well when they're remade as straight westerns. Pale Rider was just a pale imitation of Shane and it's still hard to shrug off the ghosts of Tom Skerritt in High Noon and Willie Nelson in Stagecoach. I've got my fingers crossed for Mangold's Yuma, but if all else fails there's still Takashi Miike's presumably delirious take on Django to look forward to. Sushi western, anyone?
