WATCHING this fresh take on a 1957 Glenn Ford/Van Heflin western makes you realise just how out of favour the genre is.

Cowboy movies, once a staple part of cinema, are few and far between these days.

Director James Mangold has opted to follow his Oscar-winning Walk The Line with a remake that's exciting and efficient enough but which I can't see reigniting the public's appetite for westerns.

The simple premise is that hard-up rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) must deliver captured outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the station and the train of the title in order to get his hands on the reward. Evans ended the Civic War with a bad leg and little money. He and his wife (Gretchen Moll) and two children struggle to make a living on their farm.

The owner is keen to drive them off the land and his father's unwillingness to retaliate is losing him the respect of his 14-year-old son Will (Logan Lerman).

Evans views joining the posse taking notorious outlaw Wade on the three-day journey to catch the prison train as a means to get some much-needed cash and win back his son. His companions include a veteran bounty hunter (Peter Fonda) and a doctor (Alan Tudyk), but they face a tough task as Wade's gang, led by his psycho second-in-command (Ben Foster), are determined to stop their boss going to jail.

Mangold revives all the familiar western cliches from stagecoach attack to the saloon girl with a heart of gold, but does so with a good deal of skill with Bale and Crowe evenly matched as the representatives of good and evil.

Stars: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Dallas Roberts, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Alan Tudyk, Gretchen Moll
Running time: 122 mins
Rating: Three stars