The most compelling reason to run out and see “3:10 to Yuma” may be precisely that there is no compelling reason to run out and see it. Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, originally published in 1953, this no-frills hoof and hero shoot-’em-up is a refreshing return to genre form, delightfully turning its back on all the post-modern existential angst that has been the model of the American Western since Clint Eastwood ruined the party with “Unforgiven” in 1992. Emotional complexity certainly has its place, even in the bristly wastelands of the Arizona frontier, but it rarely serves as a recipe for fun.

In “3:10 to Yuma,” director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) boldly allows the good guy to be good and the bad guy to be bad. It’s been a while since a Western has bothered with such broad strokes. But, as it turns out, straightforward is sometimes the best direction.

Christian Bale (who does, in fact, wear a white hat), plays Dale Evans, a simple, dusty rancher with no greater motive than to raise his boys and provide for his woman. Bale does a great job balancing an earthy, hard-won righteousness with a grim sense of life gone to the snakes. Having lost his leg serving the Union army, Evans’ diligent labor and honorable intentions are rewarded only by hopeless debt to a corrupt local land magnate, a flaming barn and a wasting herd plagued by draught and starvation. His honor and his family are just about all he has left. Acutely aware that his boys—one fighting tuberculosis, the other a thankless welp on the cusp of manhood—see him as the very model of failure, he competes for their respect against the romantic draw of their dime-novel criminal heroes. It’s a losing battle to start with which he fears he’s finally lost when one of the villains actually gallops onto their property in a blaze of gunfire, bigger than life, with a gang of grizzled cutthroats to knock over an armored stagecoach. When the gang’s iniquitous ringleader Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) is actually captured, the job of delivering him to the train station for a trip to the gallows seems like Evans’ only chance to secure the cash he needs to save his ranch and recapture the admiration of his family.

Crowe (in the black hat, literally), having clearly studied “Silence of the Lambs” in preparation for his role, is the best kind of cool-headed, cold-hearted badass. Erudite, confident and charming, he stares holes through the screen with an icy blue command, smooth-talking the ladies and mind-fucking the men. He liberally quotes from the Bible, but refuses to say grace. Unrepentantly comfortable inhabiting his own God-given ruthlessness, he requires only from anyone else that they, like him, simply follow the imperatives of thier own natures, for better or for worse. Just like Hannibal Lector, acts of discourtesy would seem his only visible intolerance, and, therefore, the fastest way to a bullet in the belly or a fork in the neck.

Naturally, the relationship between these contrary forces forms the core of “3:10 to Yuma.” Surrounded by weasels, weaklings and cowards, the two share a resolute disdain for hesitance and impurity. Following much the same arc as Leonard’s more modern “bring-’em back alive” romance “Out of Sight,” Evans and Wade gradually discover their common ground, and even a measure of mutual respect, while never once giving ground on either side. Their big showdown is not in the tumbleweed streets (the one Western convention the movie might lack), but in their hearts and minds.

It’s apparent that, although on opposite sides of the fence, neither character could ever outdraw the other. The balance struck between the forces of good and evil may be the only hint here of genre revisionism, and it comes at very little liability to the film’s promise of a good ol’ fashioned hang-’em high dust-up. There may be little on this trip we haven’t seen before, but there are plenty of quick-drawing scoundrels, Injun fights and shotgun justice to go around. And, when the train finally leaves the station, what else do you really want from a Western?