Russell Crowe's superb performances over the past several years, in movies such as "Master and Commander" and "Cinderella Man," have been sadly overshadowed by the tabloid adventures (awards-show outbursts, restaurant tantrums, hotel assaults) that occasionally enliven his offscreen life. But his performance in the new "3:10 to Yuma," playing the cultivated and complex outlaw Ben Wade, should dispel all such irrelevant distractions. Here his extraordinary gifts for emotional detail and finely weighted presence in a scene, and his radiant star power, are on display in their purest concentration. It's a tide-turning accomplishment, and one hopes it'll be seen by however many remain of Crowe's detractors.

Director James Mangold's goosed-up remake of a popular 1957 Western, based on an old pulp-magazine story by Elmore Leonard, has many things to recommend it, actually. Christian Bale has a hooded, sorrowful magnetism as a hard-luck rancher who joins the posse formed to escort Ben Wade to an outback Arizona train station to board the 3:10 to Yuma, the town in which he's due to be tried for his many crimes and surely hanged. Peter Fonda, so long underrated, does a venomous turn as a homicidal, Bible-thumping Pinkerton agent who's sworn to usher Wade into the afterlife at whatever cost. And Ben Foster, in a hugely entertaining performance as a psycho gunslinger, pretty much takes over every scene he's in (even Crowe lays back a bit whenever Foster rages into the picture).

The story has the simplicity of well-burnished legend. Southern Pacific Railroad bosses, having lost some $400,000 to the Wade gang's highway robberies over the years, are determined to put him out of commission. Meanwhile, a rural land baron is making life hell for small-time cattle rancher Dan Evans (Bale) and his family, damming up their water supply and calling in an onerous loan in order to take over Evans' land and sell it to the ever-encroaching railroad. In despair, Dan signs on for $200 to be part of the ragtag posse that will take Wade to make that Yuma train. Along the way, as the little group is ferociously dogged by Wade's gang, the instinctively honorable rancher comes to recognize that while Wade is from another moral universe ("It's a man's nature to take what he wants, Dan"), there's more to him than is at first apparent. (He's outwardly affable and well mannered, and carries a sketch book in which he pencils casual portraits and wildlife studies.) The two men can't really understand each other, but in the end they reach a sort of understanding.

Mangold, who's previously directed such pictures as "Walk the Line" and "Girl, Interrupted," artfully captures the dusty anomie of primitive frontier life; and he takes a very up-to-date approach to the many action scenes, thrusting the camera right into the midst of careening stagecoach chases and chaotic shootouts. He prepares the ground with a virtuoso's appreciation for the Western form; the actors do the rest, for the most part brilliantly.

Westerns are one of the founding film genres, and they go in and out of popular favor with a certain regularity. There's no point in wondering whether "3:10 to Yuma" will trigger another revival of the genre. But for two exciting hours, the picture brings it fully alive once again.

Be sure to read Kurt Loder's review of "Shoot 'Em Up," which is also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "3:10 to Yuma."

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