The current film of the same title (still playing in theatres everywhere) happens to be one of the best films of 2007, so it's fascinating to review its differences and similarities with its black-and-white predecessor of exactly fifty years ago. The scripts for the two versions feature the same characters, story line and, in some cases, even identical lines of dialogue. The central character is a down-on-his-luck Arizona rancher (Van Heflin in the old version, Christian Bale in the current film) who agrees to get a dangerous outlaw onto a train to prison in return for the money he needs to save his ranch. But what's the right thing to do when that notorious robber and killer (Glenn Ford here, Russell Crowe in the new picture) offers a far more generous payment to help him escape? In both movies, the bad guy comes across as simultaneously charming, likeable, and dangerous. Glenn Ford, who could be fatally bland when playing heroes, brings just the right hint of menace and meanness to his part - though without the irresistibly seductive aura of madness and blood lust that Crowe delivers this time around. The black and white "3.10"is also tauter, tougher, more claustrophobic - with much of the crucial action playing out in a frontier hotel room, without the spectacularly choreographed, over-the-top action scenes (or troubling twists of the ending) of the James Mangold remake. In any event, watching the original film makes far more obvious the story's similarity with another black and white classic, "High Noon" - as the omnipresent clock ticks down to a fateful decision and a good man's only hopes of assistance and support peel away from him, one by one. Reviewing the old movie also makes clear that one of the odd features of the film truly does count as nothing more than a strange coincidence: its two characters both bear the names of famous Republican Senators. Dan Evans (the name given to the Heflin/Bale character) was a GOP solon from Washington State in the 1980's, and Ben Wade (the outlaw Ford/Crowe character) was a "Radical Republican" from Ohio from 1851 to 1869. The real Ben Wade came within one vote of becoming President of the United States (as President Pro Tem of the Senate) during the Andrew Johnson Impeachment crisis - but that's another (and fairly horrifying) story. In any event, the script for the original film appeared long before Dan Evans became a prominent politician, so the use of two Senatorial names for the main characters could hardly count as intentional.