Russell Crowe Shoots Straight in Cowboys & Indians Magazine Preview of Gritty '3:10 to Yuma'

Russell Crowe Shoots Straight in Cowboys & Indians Magazine Preview of Gritty '3:10 to Yuma'

DALLAS, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Russell Crowe rides tall as outlaw Ben Wade in "3:10 to Yuma," the critically acclaimed Western set to open Sept. 7 at theaters throughout North America. So it's only fitting that Cowboys & Indians, The Premiere Magazine of the West, has lassoed the Oscar-winning actor for a cover-story preview feature in the October issue on sale Sept. 4. "There's something that's always very simple and direct about the morality of Westerns," Crowe tells C&I. "Traditionally, it's always been very easy to see who's wearing the white hat and who's wearing the black." In "3:10 to Yuma," director James Mangold's thrilling remake of the 1957 Western classic, Crowe most definitely falls into the black-hat category, playing a criminally charming bandit leader who's captured by chance after a daring stagecoach robbery.

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Christian Bale of "Batman Begins" fame co-stars alongside Crowe as Civil War veteran Dan Evans, a debt-plagued farmer who agrees to help get Wade on board a train bound for a Yuma prison. The two actors forged a bond of mutual respect and humorous banter during the grueling location shooting in New Mexico. "Yeah," Crowe jokes, "whatever situation we're in, I just turned around and said, 'Batman! What have you got in the utility belt, man?' Like, 'The river's swollen, flooded, you know? What have you got in the utility belt? Come on, Batman, sort it out!' Which is unusual in a Western, someone having a utility belt."

James Mangold, who also directed "Walk the Line," considers himself fortunate that both Crowe and Bale are "truly amazing actors" -- and, just as important, genuinely persuasive as Westerners. "To really be honest," Mangold says in the C&I October issue, "there are few people who can do something like this. If you're making a Western in a time when people really don't make Westerns anymore, and you're looking for men who look comfortable and alive and real on a horse, who seem appropriate in a period film, who carry with them a kind of timeless masculinity instead of, you know, a kind of modern, slumped-shouldered, affable, goofy quality -- then you've automatically eliminated almost every guy working in movies except these two guys and a few others."

Elsewhere in the October issue of Cowboys & Indians, John H. Ostdick details the campaign to combat modern-day cattle rustlers in the New West, while Maxine Joy Hansen pays tribute to Old Hollywood legend Gene Autry in a celebration of "America's favorite singing cowboy" on the 100th anniversary of Autry's birth. Cowboy poet Red Steagall talks with Hawaiian cattle rancher Corky Bryan, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson discusses his race for the White House, and Texas-born country music star Miranda Lambert looks forward to performing for the folks back home at the Oct. 13-14 Big State Festival.

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