Year of the Crowe

Following a two-year absence from the silver screen – yes, I’m omitting last year’s Under the Tuscan Sun rip-off A Good Year on purpose – Russell Crowe comes back this year with not one but two high profile films.

I just hope the Oscar winner will avoid any PR nightmare incidents this time around – it really turned me off when he threw a phone to a hotel employee back in 2005 during his press tour for Cinderella Man.

Up first is Sept. 7’s 3:10 to Yuma, in which a small-time rancher agrees to hold a captured outlaw who's awaiting a train to go to court in Yuma, Ariz., and a battle of wills ensues as the latter tries to psych out the former. (The film co-stars Christian Bale.)

Then in Nov. 2’s American Gangster, a drug lord (Denzel Washington) smuggles heroin into Harlem during the 1970s by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam. (Crowe plays the detective who brings him to justice.)

Photo: Lionsgate (3:10 to Yuma).