Those who believe the remake surpasses the original have lost all perspective on good taste. I happened to see the remake first when it came out and never got around to the original. It didn't take long while this film was rolling before I realized it outclassed the remake with better pacing, storytelling, direction, and a first-rate cast which elevated an already-good story by Elmore Leonard. The remake by comparison has more filler, extended action scenes, stuff that didn't appear in the short story, and certainly an ending that Leonard himself disapproved of where Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) kills his own men before getting on the train and Dan Evans (Christian Bale) dies. In the original, neither happen: Wade (Glenn Ford) and Dan (Van Heflin) both jump onto the train and then Dan shoots down Wade's secondhand man who is in pursuit.

What we get is a rewarding "happy" ending. Van Heflin lives, it starts to rain (a long draught was affecting Dan's family and livelihood on their ranch) and his wife on horseback looks up and smiles with joy almost like Tim Robbins smiling in the night rain in Shawshank Redemption. Wade looks pleased with the outcome and shrugs that he's escaped Yuma prison before. This is such a better conclusion and doesn't need the added violence and obligatory main character dying, which filmmakers in the 2000s think is more dramatic. Gone too is all the riding across country, campfire scenes, and the railroad mountain-clearing segment of the remake. The original film is a taut 90 minutes with no wasted time and yet it's all about waiting and time. As such it would make a great double-bill with High Noon. Very different stories but the themes and ideas rhyme.

A protagonist is waiting for the bad guys or a moment in time to arrive, either at noon or 3:10; both characters are poised to sacrifice themselves out of stubbornness; the futile struggle of getting others to help, as in 3:10 at the hotel when the initial posse defending it decide to leave claiming they have families. While Christian Bale's Dan is more tormented by his past, desperate, and trying to find meaning until the very end, giving the character a greater psychological depth, Van Heflin plays it a little straighter, and his angst is subtler. Glenn Ford as Wade steals the show, however. There is no doubt that Russell Crowe studied Ford's performance because Crowe imitates his very speech and mannerisms. Crowe is good in the remake, although perhaps because he had a great model to emulate in Ford, who really invents this character as the laid-back, sly, coy, and obviously dangerous leader of outlaws who exhibits intelligence and humanity. He's a bad guy who sympathizes with the good guy. Every scene with Ford is electric.

Apart from the performances that could carry this film alone, there are memorable and virtuoso shots, good editing, excellent black-and-white photography, and a pedigree of quality here that makes an A-western out of what might have been a B-western short story. Not that the story is flimsy—it's quite unlike anything else in the western story repertory—but it is simple. It appeared in a dime magazine after all; a 5000-word story. The special features on the Criterion disc are great: two featurettes about the film and interviews with Ford's son talking about his father, with some shocking anecdotes about Ford's promiscuity and proclivities.