3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Note: I last watched this some time ago (when it was first released), so there's a considerable gap involved. I possibly should give it a second chance, but I don't have a great deal of inclination to.

The basic plot involves a farmer who's hired to escort a captured outlaw to catch a train, on which he will be taken to jail. The outlaw's band end up finding out where he's going and surrounding the hotel they're waiting for the train in to attempt to free him. Obviously much of it is a tense wait.

I'm sort of in two minds about this. On one level it's clearly very well made, and beautifully photographed, and so forth. On the other hand, it's inferior to the 1950s original in just about every way. Basically, my complaints come down to this:

• The good bits are basically shot-for-shot identical to in the original (and in fairness, largely just based on the Elmore Leonard short story on which it's based).
• The additions, which weren't in the original, mostly seem superfluous and don't really add to the story (especially a slightly odd excursion through a railway tunnel which is being mined). A lot of it feels like padding because the expected length of a film has gone up since the 50s.
• The plot seems to want to heap misfortune on the hero (the farmer) to give him extra motivation to fulfil his mission. It really doesn't need this, and works perfectly fine without it.
• The ending—after an unnecessary exaggerated action bit—doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and is a significant deviation from both the short story and the 50s film. It made the whole thing seem slightly pointless and came across as a twist ending for the sake of it.

In fairness, apparently Elmore Leonard disliked the original 50s film (based on the introduction to his "Complete Short Stories" book). This seems slightly odd, since it struck me as decent quality and basically true to the short story, but perhaps some leeway should be given there.

In conclusion, I suspect I've been a bit harsh based on it being a slightly inferior remake, although objectively not as inferior as I've made out. However, I still think there's no good reason to watch this over the 1950s version.