Four cowboys looking for a little peace and quiet and an escape from their past lives as gunmen, drive a herd of cattle across the plains. When their paths cross a big-shot local rancher known as Denton Baxtor, the past catches up with the former cowboys and they find themselves taking part in a gunfight for justice.
Always considered THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES the best western, that is until I watched OPEN RANGE. more >
Always considered THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES the best western, that is until I watched OPEN RANGE. < less
By Howard Schumann on 5th May 2005
Kevin Costner's Open Range is an old-fashioned Western that provides solid entertainment with some fine performances by Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall and Annette Bennin... more >
Kevin Costner's Open Range is an old-fashioned Western that provides solid entertainment with some fine performances by Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall and Annette Benning. Based on a novel by Lauran Pain and a screenplay by Craig Storper, the film has all of the appropriate attributes: a wealthy rancher that has the town terrorized, the corrupt lawmen who do his bidding, the kid who lost his parents, and the good guys who only kill because they have to.
Set in Montana in the American West in 1882, Boss belongs to a dying breed of cowboys whose way of life is simple, yet authentic. He moves with his herd through the open West, allowing his cattle to feed wherever his travels take them, sometimes on land claimed by big business ranchers. His traveling group includes Charlie whose been riding with him for ten years, the heavy-set Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and a sixteen-year old boy they call Button (Diego Luna). After Mose does not return from an errand, Boss and Charlie ride into the town of Harmonville and find nothing but trouble.
Both Boss and Charlie hint of troubled pasts and the film is a tribute to their redemption and the end of an era. Charlie is the silent, sensitive type who does not show much emotion or even crack a smile even when he pursues the doctor's sister played by Annette Benning. Boss exudes kindness as expressed in his concern for his wounded men. His fight is over principle. "Cows is one thing," he says, "but one man telling another man where he can go in this country is something else." Open Range pays tribute to the rugged individualism of the prairie and Boss' character and values lift the film far above the average.
< less
Kevin Costner’s first film as director in seven years finds the actor playing Charley Waite, a cattlehand working for Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall), and moving their f... more >
Kevin Costner’s first film as director in seven years finds the actor playing Charley Waite, a cattlehand working for Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall), and moving their freegrazing cattle across the land. Waite is a former soldier, haunted by what he’s seen, trying to assemble a new life for himself and tentatively working out a relationship with doctor’s assistant Annette Bening. The problem is that Charley and Boss have strayed into Harmonville, a small town ruled by marshal James Russo, puppet for a local businessman (Michael Gambon), who’s seen off the Injuns and wants to keep his property out of the hands of any other outsiders.
This is a well-timbered picture, often literally so: you find yourself comparing the varying textures of the planks, gravestones, wagons and barns hewn from wood to decorate the narrative and serve as symbols of the reconstruction going on here. (After his last film as director – The Postman – and his last as actor – Dragonfly – the role of a man haunted by the terrors of the past fits Costner like a pair of well-worn riding boots.)
Kevin the actor graciously cedes a substantial part of the film to Duvall and the sprightly, handsome Bening – this, he may have learnt from the decidedly Kev-centric Postman – but Open Range is primarily Kevin the director’s film. An early scene has Boss advising young hand Button (Diego Luna, from Y Tu Mama Tambien) to take up a trade in life, on the grounds “you learn a trade, you’ll always have boots on your feet and a roof over your head”. There’s something in Costner’s directorial technique to suggest he’s taken that line on board. Admittedly, the manual he’s working from appears to be a pre-1970 edition, but this is as fine an example of neo-classical filmmaking as we’ve seen of late, drawing heavily on the studio era in its plotting and shot mechanics.
The Postman tended towards the bombastic in both its action and symbolism, but Costner applies a surer han d here; he knows when to pull the rein in, and when to let it out. It’s unlikely something as delicate as a china tea set has ever been used as a signifier in previous Westerns, but it is here, so effectively that it comes to comprise the final shot of the movie. Bening’s frontierswoman has previously served Charley and Boss tea in cups so bijoux that the cowboys can’t get their gnarled and blistered fingers through the handles; later, Charley – spooked by a hallucination of intruders – will send the set crashing to the ground, resulting in the film’s gently charming punchline.
One of the most interesting and appealing aspects of the film is its softening of the stock Western hero, away from the aggressive, rapacious brawler out to claim a spot of land for himself. Storper instead lays out a world in which men can be called Bluebonnet, which may be the most fanciful name in any oater since Shirley Temple’s Philadelphia Thursday in Fort Apache. Costner’s Charley, mea nwhile, picks up the mud he’s stepped into Bening’s parlour, and goes on to cook a mean breakfast in her kitchen. This is someone for whom domesticity holds as much appeal as – if not more than – a life on the range.
Between them, Costner and Storper have rustled up a winning new type: the touchy-feely, house-trained gunslinger, less the Newman of Butch Cassidy or The Left-Handed Gun than, simply, a New Man, albeit one who knows what to do with a pistol to be of any use by the time the final shootout comes around. (It’s perhaps what Ford was unknowingly heading towards in his lighter films in this genre, particularly Three Godfathers.)
This is one of those features where the white picket fence surrounding the Bening residence is – rather than constrictive, a marker of boundaries – actually standing for something positive and worth working towards, something which, like much of the film around it, resists all sneering. You might want it tied up – or nailed down – a little sooner than Costner manages after the last bullet has been fired, but then old cowboys die hard.
< less
