Review: Open Range (2003)
Harvey S. Karten
OPEN RANGE
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B
Touchstone Pictures
Directed by: Kevin Costner
Written by: Craig Storper, novel "Open Range Men" by Lauran
Paine
Cast: Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael
Gambon, Michael Jeter
Screened at: Loews E-Walk, NYC, 8/12/03
During the latter half of the 19th Century there existed a
lawlessness in parts of the United States that could remind
some of the situation in Iraq just after the Saddam regime was
overthrown, a vacuum of anarchy. As Martin Scorsese tells us
in "Gangs of New York," The Big Apple was in virtual civil war
when a young man away from town for 16 years, comes back to
avenge his father's murder. Thousands of miles away in the
1880's, the West was quite a bit different from the way it is
today. Where killers are sometimes treated to lethal injections
as in Texas, the bad guys did not have to wait ten, fifteen,
twenty years before final vengeance (and purportedly
deterrence) took place. Feuds were settled in a day, a week, a
month with pistols and rifles. In "High Noon," the greatest
Western of them all, Fred Zimmerman, blessed with Gary
Cooper heading his cast, showed that in just 84 minutes you
could tell a taut story of a marshall who knows a gunman is
seeking revenge and feels a responsibility to stay and face the
guy with no help from the townspeople.
Kevin Costner, on the other hand, requires 138 minutes to do
more or less the same thing, though in his "Open Range," the
good guys do get some strategic help from the people of a town
that lies somewhere in the midst of a wide open range
surrounded by glorious mountains (actually filmed in Western
Canada in Alberta and near Calgary). Costner, an actor-
director-producer as known for his sense of humor as Al Gore,
shows his love of the old West while at the same time indicating
as he did in "The Bodyguard" an embarrassment with love and
sex. "Open Range" is a classic Western, not given a modern
reading as some have done with Shakespeare's texts. To
declare it the best Western since Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven"
(about a one-time killer, now reformed, who comes out of
retirement to make another hit for the money) is not saying a lot
given the paucity of movies of the genre. If the theme of
"Unforgiven" is the impact of killing and being killed, the motif of
"Open Range" is not without a likeness, focusing on Charley
(Kevin Costner), a former killer now coming out of retirement,
who has been working for the past decade with Boss (Robert
Duvall). A buddy movie that treats Boss and Charley as though
they are an old marriage couple (nothing gay implied), "Open
Range" glorifies the wide open spaces that were pollution-free
(horses provided transportation) but cautions us that the villains,
rich as yuppies yet less civilized, fought to retain their power
and importance as alpha males.
As the story opens Boss, Charlie together with young
Mexican Button (Diego Luna) and the hulking Mose (Abraham
Benrubi), are a foursome of so-called free-grazers who run into
trouble when they cross some land controlled by rich Denton
Baxter (Michael Gambon) who hates free-grazers' insistence
that the country is open to everyone and instead claims the right
to keep his land empty of others' cattle. Because Baxter owns
not only the land but also Sheriff Poole (James Russo), various
citizens therein are not fond of him; not the horse-sitter Percy
(Michael Jeter), not Doc Barlow (Dean McDermott), not the
doctor's unmarried but highly choosy sister Sue (Annette
Bening. The story itself is simple: a conflict between the will of
people who live in the open with the cattle and that of a landlord
and sheriff who think nothing of using extreme prejudice on the
free-grazers.
Director Costner never makes the conflict clear; for example,
doesn't the bad Irish-American make a reasonable point when
he attacks free-grazers as trespassers? we'll just have to
suspend disbelief and accept Boss's view that he and his trio
have every right to roam the West at will. Nor do Boss and
Charlie appreciate attacks on his quartet that take the life of one
and put another in critical condition.
While a story of this nature could be wrapped up in "High
Noon"'s 84 minutes, Costner allows himself two and one-quarter
hours to develop his characters, and illustrate the environment
that forms a backdrop to their activities. While we're tempted to
glamorize life on the range, think again: while camping is just
fine as long as you don't do it all year round, these guys have to
operate without the amenities of civilization. No sushi bars, no
family, not more than a few blinks of the eye in the questionable
comfort of the rickety old town build on wood, for the most part,
and on glass designed to be shot out with a rifle when the
enemy lurks just without.
The landscape is a beaut. Costner in one scene floods the
fictional town of Harmonville (actually filmed on the Stoney
Nakoda First Nations Reserve west of Calgary), a dramatic
peak until that point being the rescue of a dog caught in the
flood, terrified and swimming for his life. The best thing about
the town is that the one sawbones, Doc Barlow, never has
people waiting in his office, his sister on call whenever the doc
is doing a home visit to provide bandages and love at first sight
with Charlie, seducing the older Boss into revealing what he had
never told his pal of ten years: that he had a wife and kid some
time back who both died of typhus.
Costner takes a risk in going with an iffy genre, the American
Western, an opportunity to attract a young audience unfamiliar
with the films of John Ford and bring in an older crowd itching to
relive the days of the Lone Ranger, Tom Mix and Curley Bradley
the Singing Marshall. Lenser James Muro photographs the
beauty of the open range that could make the overly-urbanized
viewer who takes in the movie after shopping at Zabar's think of
camping until the desire wears off the next morning. "Open
Range" is long and mostly slow with a climactic gunfight that's
brutal and powerful, a potential revival of the genre which has
lain mostly dormant during the past eleven years.
Rated R. 138 minutes.(c) 2003 by Harvey Karten at
Harvey...@cs.com
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Bob Bloom
Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Michael Jeter, Diego Luna,
James Russo, Abraham Benrubi and Dean McDermott. Music by Michael Kamen.
Screenplay by Craig Storper. Directed by Kevin Costner. Rated R. Running
time: 138 mins.
Please, somebody, given Kevin Costner lessons in editing and assure him
that it's not against the law to release a movie that runs less than two
hours.
His latest, Open Range, returns Costner to the saddle in a bloated
Western that could have told its story in half the time.
Using a well-worn plot that has served every cowboy from Tom Mix to
Clint Eastwood, Costner plays Charley Waite, who along with Boss
Spearman (Robert Duvall), "Button" (Diego Luna) and Mose Harrison
(Abraham Benrubi) drive cattle on the open range.
But a powerful rancher opposes free grazers and sets out to wreck the
foursome and drive off their herd. This nasty land baron, Denton Baxter
(Michael Gambon), also owns most of the local town and holds its
residents in a grip of fear.
A simple Western tale that John Ford could have told economically in 90
minutes or less, but Costner, who also serves as director, drags it out
to just under 140 minutes, striving to create an epic — a "Dances With
Steers."
He only succeeds in allowing his audience to stray like an abandoned
herd as Open Range rambles on with too much talk and too little action.
Open Range is at its best whenever the camera focuses on Duvall. He
covers familiar terrain, portraying a rugged, honorable, sensible man
similar to his characterization in Lonesome Dove. His Spearman lives by
a vanishing code that he continues to hold sacred.
Duvall smells of authenticity. He easily exudes a quiet dignity and
authority.
Roles for women in Westerns generally lack depth, but Annette Bening's
Sue Barlow, a middle-aged spinster who shares a mutual attack's with
Costner's Charley, brings a worn beauty to her character. She is, as
Charley describes her, "a handsome woman" who knows her own mind and is
as capable at patching up a wounded man as she is in facing down an
armed petty despot.
Costner holds his own with his co-stars, giving most of the scenes to
either Duvall or Bening.
As a director, Costner knows how to film landscapes. Open Range is a
beautiful movie when on the prairie, but brown and muddy when the scene
shifts to the town. He also does not shy away from violence. His
gunbattles are brutal and savage.
Costner, however, likes to let his camera linger. Many scenes run on
too long after a point is made or the plot advanced. He needs to learn
to be more judicious and brutal in the editing room.
The final reel's shoot-out is wonderfully staged, and is Costner's best
staged sequence since the buffalo hunt in Dances With Wolves.
However, he follows that up with a clunky anti-climatic finale that
runs far too long.
Open Range does not reach the heights of such classic Westerns as Red
River or Unforgiven. It strives to be classy, which is one of its
faults. It could have been a bit grittier and dirtier as well as a lot
shorter.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette,
IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bbl...@journalandcourier.com or at
bobb...@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at
www.jconline.com by clicking on movies.
Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site,
www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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