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This is a bad, and I do mean reading ancient Sumerian out of the Necronomicon bad, idea.

"Girl, Interrupted" and "Walk the Line" director James Mangold and his bride, "Kids" and "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead "producer Cathy Konrad, have set the Columbia Pictures remake of legendary director Delmer Daves' classic Elmore Leonard short story based 1957 western "3:10 to Yuma" as their next film. (the flick or should I say "abomination of all the gods hold holy will begin shooting next) summer. Konrad and Mangold finally hopped aboard the train to Yuma after getting a new screenplay from Michael Mann's "Collateral" collaborator Stuart Beattie, (who was rewriting the script delivered by hacks of the moment Michael Brandt and Derek Haas.) and more importantly the variety of pre-production troubles that have plagued the proposed film ever since Sony Pictures dropped it from their slate over over-sized back-end deal concerns despite having true blue megastars Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise attached and just plain interested respectively.

"There are a lot of good-bad themes that were only touched on in the original," Mangold said. "A lot of Westerns are meditative, but this is a total struggle and a climactic showdown, that has the potential to be one of the great movie gunfights."

So anyway, even though the folks at Sony didn't want to board the 3:10 to Yuma, the folks at Lionsgate do. The abomination (sorry, there I go again – I just can't seem to help it) I mean film, will now be staring Russell Crowe and "The Prestige" star Christian Bale instead of Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise—who dropped out of the pic over concerns that reportedly had something or other to do with hydrogen bombs, ancient alien ghosts and volcanoes (whatever the hell that means).

In the wake of the capture of an outlaw leader named Ben Wade (the incomparable Glenn Ford) a small town rancher, named Dan Evans (the steadfast Van Heflin), gets himself talked into taking the outlaw in secret to a neighboring town so as to avoid Wade's decidedly out of control outlaw gang. Of course things don't quite go as planed and while the two wait in one of those perfectly stark black-n-white hotel rooms there for the titular 3:10 train to Yuma, a battle of wills (and a fair number of six guns) ensues when it becomes clear that Wade's gang knows all about the "secret" move.

It may all sound like just another western but the original "3:10 to Yuma" is so much more than it's difficult to describe. First off Glenn Ford may be best remembered for playing reliable authority figures (from the untouchable cop in Otto Preminger's "The Big Heat" to Jonathan Kent in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie), but he was at his best whenever he got the chance to play a real bastard (remember "Gilda"). Like Henry Fonda's villainous turns in "Warlock" or Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West," it's just more fun to watch a decent guy play a rotten one.

Watching Ford play Ben Wade, leader of the west's meanest gang, is quiet simply electric. He underplays his munificent but charismatic bad guy beautifully. After a stagecoach robbery that ends with a dead driver, Wade and gang casually head into Bisbee (your basic smaller than small old west town) for a few post robbery and murder drinks. Unfortunately Wade bumps into a pretty townie (assailed by the lovely Felicia Farr) he just can't not stop and seduce. In the meantime, Dan Evans — a henpecked farmer Wade didn't kill during the stagecoach hold up — helps the law trap Wade.

Now, Bisbee happens to be such a small town that Wade's gang could wipe it out with out much of problem, so the folk their only way out from under is to get Wade to the 3:10 train to Yuma — which is a day and a whole town away and Evans and the town drunk (Henry Jones). But, Wade doesn't go easily, but Evans — whose wife scolds him for not being moral enough — has something to prove, and so he sets out to prove it.

The film has an uneven start, decidedly pedestrian cinematography and a few dull Heflin setup scenes. But Ford's character commands the screen, and once he rides into frame "3:10 to Yuma starts cooking and it never lets up. It's often been said that 90% of good directing is good casting, and there might not be a better case study for why that's true than "3:10 to Yuma" . . . Both Heflin and Glen Ford are just right for their roles — Heflin with a look of failure that forces us to wonder what past transgressions are fueling his almost perverse obstinacy, and a provocatively, virile Ford delivers a bad man any woman would love to cozy up to. A taunt piece of sagebrush cinema, "3:10 to Yuma" more than deserves its reputation as a classic of the western genre.