The 2007 film is enjoyable, but the 1957 film is far superior. The interplay between Glenn Ford and Van Heflin is a treat.

spoilers

Both are good films without being great films, tho it should be noted the 57 version was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The cinematography in the 57 version is stunning.

The Daves version is much more of a psychological thriller, focusing on the interplay between Evans and Wade and what they represent. There is a fine line between tension and tedium and sometimes it falls on the wrong side. The emotional range of the characters and the acting is, typical of mid 20th Century film making, much narrower than we would expect from a modern film. The charitable view would be 'concise'. The critical view would be '2 dimensional.' Still, Ford, I think, gives a really interesting performance that hovers between two contradictory poles. It is that performance that is the heart of the 57 version. Right to the end we are unsure which way Wade will go.

The Mangold version takes on 50 years of accretions to the Western genre. It's not a Western by numbers but there are a lot of things in this movie, and things that sometimes don't need to be in the movie, that anyone familiar with the genre will have seen many times before. Not the least is a lot of pointless violence and a change to the ending that is not so much shocking as flat out disappointing.

The difference in endings by the way is illustrative of the difference in the quality of the writing.

In the 57 version, Evans needs $200 for water rights from a neighbour. He isn't in debt to anyone. His family is struggling with drought. Altho there is a secondary story about his sons suspecting he is a coward, this isn't his prime motivation. That secondary story needs to be there to save 'the good guy' from being seen as a mere mercenary. So when the rain comes in the final scene the audience knows Evans, his farm and his family will be well. That's the happy ending that will satisfy most of the audience. But the more curious person will realise that the rain meant he never had to go thru this trauma with Wade at all. And if Evans' story ends with certainty, Wade's ends with ambiguity. He has escaped from Yuma before. Will he again?

The 07 version carelessly tosses out those ironic contrasts. Evans dies. There is no rain. Wade seems assured of escape. The message seems to be that pride and courage are meaningless and that violence wins. That might be a fair thing for a movie to say, but it is hardly new. Since at least the 1970s movie makers have been inverting the Western in this way. It is, imo, an even more tired cliche than the heroic Western of the mid 20th Century that is being ripped apart. It is also devoid of irony.

As to the acting in the 07 version, Crowe clearly paid attention to Ford's earlier performance and brings a lot of the same presence. I don't know whether it was the way the Evans character was rewritten, or Manglod's direction, or Bales take, or some combination of all of those things, but the sheer frailty of the character, and the pointlessness of his choices really undermined the dynamic between Evans and Wade. In the original, Evans was a plain old fashioned decent man who also happened to need some money. Its substitution with some kind of imperative to make his son proud of him even if he dies doing it, is to toss away a seemingly out of date idea of manhood and replace it with something that is simply unbelievable, and even more cheesy than what it was supposed to replace. Because Bale imbues this character with every ounce of method acting at his disposal, the sheer intensity of the portrayal only deepens the absurdity of the character.

Short version: As rudely_murray said earlier, both are worth watching, with the 57 shading out the 07. Neither are great films.