I was worried that watching an original film and its remake on back to back days would a bit of a chore, but the newer 3:10 To Yuma is good enough, and different enough to stand on its own. I'm not going to bore you with all of the little discrepancies, the main difference is that the original film had a much more sympathetic antagonist. Russell Crowe is charming enough to still have you rooting for him to make good, but there is none of the ambiguity of the original. Crowe and his gang rack up a body count in the first 10 minutes that would make the original film blush. Later in the film Crowe murders a man with his bare hands for the crime of being annoying, just so we're clear, he's bad.
That out of the way, the setup was mostly the same, the robbery, the slip-up leading to capture, the wily plan to get the him on the train to Yuma. The mood though is different, instead of a slow burn where the tension builds slowly as the two antagonist dance around each other in a will-he, won't-he, sort of way, we get more of a monster movie situation where Wade picks off the posse transporting him one by one on the way to the rail station. The monster is really charming though, have I mentioned that?
Ultimately though, the stakes are the same, the ending hits a bit harder, and I'm going to give this one a 3/5 stars as well.