It is a good role for Crowe. Seems to be the kind of thing he's good at. I don't know what it is about Russell - he just doesn't belong in this century. I've seen him in a couple of movies set in the present and he just looks wrong. But stick him in armour or a cowboy hat and he owns the screen.

despite the testosterone, or perhaps because of it...

The testosterone bothers me not so much because of the characterisation of the men, but because of what it does to the women. Westerns, by their nature tend to have a mostly male cast, which is unrealistic to start with. In this movie, there's grand total of two women. One is a whore. The other is Evans' wife, a sweet, shy little thing who cooks and simpers politely and doesn't even shoot a gun when the bad guys try to burn out their farm. And that's such bullshit. A woman in that society would at the very least know how to shoot, even if she didn't like to.

But despite that... it's a good film.