Watching the clock

Having just watched Christian Bale crawl through the jungle in Rescue Dawn, I was kind of hoping he'd take a desk job in his next movie outing, but here he is, in 3:10 to Yuma, crawling through the American West, circa 1875. In James Mangold's remake of the 1957 movie that starred Glenn Ford as a sadistically charming outlaw, Bale has the Van Heflin role of the poor cattle rancher who agrees to escort America's Most Wanted to prison in order to reclaim his land and his self-respect. And Bale, working from the inside out, as always, makes us meet him halfway, which we gladly do. But it's Russell Crowe, as the legendary Ben Wade, who walks off with scene after scene - quoting the Bible one minute, jabbing a fork in someone's throat the next. The 1957 version built up its tension by keeping an eye on the clock. (Would Wade be on that 3:10 to Yuma?) The remake adds a layer of psychotic mayhem. And although the movie's enjoyable enough, especially when Crowe's sweet-talking someone he plans to gut and de-bone, you have to wonder whether graphic violence is all we're capable of coming up with these days.