3:10 to Yuma moseyed to the top of a typically quiet early September weekend box office. Lionsgate's $55 million remake of the 1957 Western of the same name loaded a passable $14 million on approximately 3,100 screens at 2,652 theaters. To illustrate the historic softness of the weekend after Labor Day, the movie posted the highest-grossing non-horror opening on record for the frame.

Much has been made of Hollywood's aversion to theatrical Westerns in the past few decades, and 3:10 to Yuma's opening probably isn't significant enough to affect the state of the genre either way. The movie marks the first widely-released, traditionally gunslinging Western since Open Range in 2003. That picture had greater attendance out of the gate with $16 million adjusted for ticket price inflation at 2,075 sites and it closed with the equivalent of $66 million today.

Proper Westerns are so rare that when a movie has Western trappings, that fact becomes the all-encompassing selling point. Such was the case with 3:10 to Yuma, which added some slick graphics to its action-oriented marketing. The picture also stood out as a vehicle for lead actor Russell Crowe, who has had unusual success in the period action movies Gladiator and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though his first Western, The Quick and the Dead, was a disappointment.

Also opening, Shoot 'Em Up made a weak $5.7 million at 2,108 locations. Too self-conscious and too much like a video game in its premise, New Line Cinema's over-the-top action picture failed like the studio's recent similar pictures Domino and Running Scared. Faring far worse was The Brothers Solomon, a $10 million Sony comedy that grossed merely $508,601 at 700 venues.

In second for the weekend, Labor Day champion Halloween bled 64 percent to $9.5 million for $43.7 million in 10 days, its drop common for the horror genre. Holding well, Superbad followed with $7.6 million, down 39 percent for $103.2 million in 24 days. In general, holdovers saw standard declines for the frame. Brandon Gray