3:10 to Yuma - originally an Elmore Leonard short story, then a 1957 film, now a film again – is the story of troubled rancher Dan Evans, played refreshingly downbeat by Christian Bale, and his journey to transport trouble-maker Ben Wade, played refreshingly against type by Russell Crowe, both to prison and moral justice. For the viewer raised on the revisionist western (see Unforgiven, Open Range ) Yuma 's opening half-hour will be something of a cinema shock. Death in Yuma isn't melodramatic, the scenery isn't a main player, the score doesn't pluck heartstrings with a vengeance and the screenplay doesn't demand we assess age and ponder reason. Yuma is the stuff of western purist dreams; a film with all the conventions of classic genre and none of the short-comings and if you delight in cliché handled knowingly and transposed into entertainment without pretence, your ride on Yuma will be as pleasant as they come.

Mangold (Copland, Walk the Line) is the perfect fit for the material, with his usual ingredients of masculine anxiety and conflict a bold presence in a screenplay wonderfully aware of its position on the field. Mangold isn't a director out to leave an auteur shaped mark on the genre, rather he's out to be a part of it and revive a straight-shooting approach to the generic with a solid understanding of what pieces go in which spaces. The pacing is a delight, giving the characters just the right time to build their barks to bites and shift gear at the drop of a well-timed hat.

A cast like this doesn't approach a genre on life-support very often and the results are as you would expect. Minor turns from Luke Wilson, Alan Tudyk and Peter Fonda shine in the shadow of the towering headliners but it's Ben Foster who grips the film by its delicates. As Wade's ghost of vengeance, Foster infuses every scene with the sort of effortless presence that supporting players so rarely do but always should. To say Bale and Crowe are back on form would assume they were ever off but the work on show here can't go without special commendation and allows a miniature work-shop on why they call it an A-list.

If the western was dead then Yuma is the shining light in the dark that will hopefully signal a return to the confident and economic form the genre was once a beacon of.

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