Film Review: OPEN RANGE *** (out of 5)
A small-time cattleman and his crew run afoul of a wealthy land owner intent on their destruction.
An elegiac film about a vanishing way of life, Kevin Costner’s Open Range is the most old-fashioned, emotionally honest Western anyone has dared to make in at least thirty years, maybe longer. Not even Costner’s own Dances with Wolves (1990), which seemed to prove that a worn-out mythology of the West could perform new tricks, showed this much bald respect for a genre which long ago had its day in the sun. In our era of pervasively unearned irony and myopic self-reference, the fact Costner even wanted to make this film, nevermind convincing others to follow him, makes Open Range one of the most daring movies anyone will attempt in 2003, a Quixotic gesture defying the gods of demography.
The screenplay is a throwback to a time before Eastwood, before Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, when John Ford and Howard Hawks still reigned over the mature, adult branch of the genre and Westerns focused unselfconsciously on basic conflicts in the European mindset that produced the Civil War and Manifest Destiny. The classic Western drew constant oppositions between Civilization and Wilderness, Homesteaders and Wanderers, Action and Intellect, Trust and Betrayal, Chaos and Order. It was a wholly American mythology with a sharp moral focus, disdaining muddy equivocations about Right and Wrong, continually setting up and resolving, in dramatic terms, what is an essentially irresolvable dilemma: the eternal struggle between individual desire and the good of the community.
From its title to its last line, Open Range draws wholeheartedly from the classic Western template, refusing to let go of any convention merely because it’s clichéd. “Boss” (played by sublime Everyman Robert Duvall) is a Crusty-But-Benign elder plainsman taking a small herd to market, looking to settle down, who finds himself under attack from an Evil Landowner. His Loyal Partner Charley (Costner) is a taciturn Man-With-A-Past who defers to him in all matters, though they fight “like an old married couple,” and who falls in love with a Beautiful-But-Strong prairie spinster named Sue (Annette Bening), who in turn represents the good side of Civilization, the proof that values such as hard work and honesty can be maintained without perpetual wandering.
The great surprise of the film, as with all of Costner’s best work either as an actor or as a multi-hyphenate, is how much in earnest it is. Open Range treats its archetypal situations with all the seriousness of My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) or Shane (George Stevens, 1953), and finds its humor in charming quirks of character, as when the film slows to observe Duvall, the rough hewn cowpoke, fumbling with a tea cup in a lady‘s dining room. Even when Costner allows himself to satirize genre conventions, the humor is gentle and skewed, sneaking up on audience expectations, like the film’s running joke about the sanctity of dogs in American life.
Another Costner strength freely displayed in Open Range is his generosity. Surrounding himself with first rate movie stars like Duvall and Bening is the smartest thing he’s done in years, and he gives them equal and sometimes greater screen time than he gives himself, using major talent to shape an excellent ensemble. Duvall, in fact, gets top billing, even though Costner is considered the bigger box-office draw, a measure of the filmmaker‘s respect for an actor who consistently lifts the caliber of any film in which he appears.
Like any Western worth its salt, Open Range moves toward the time-honored shoot-out for its finale, and here Costner delivers a memorable action sequence that is one part historical fidelity — most real shoot-outs were quick and nasty, confusing and bloody confrontations with no clear victor — and one part show biz, going on for several minutes beyond the plausibility mark, as nearly all contemporary Hollywood films do. But it is clear the director has done his homework (probably while researching the lesser Wyatt Earp, 1994), and the climax of Open Range is about as tense and exciting as they come. It’s just too bad he couldn’t have taken another page from John Ford’s book, and kept the action in its proper place, along with the other flourishes.
Caveats or no, Open Range is an honorable piece of moviemaking, completely lacking modern cynicism and genuinely versed in its own faded genre, an excellent comeback vehicle for a movie star/director who still has things to show us. Within the film’s very standard framework, Costner fills each scene with wonderful details about a time so long past us now, it seems like a foreign land, which is precisely what made Dances With Wolves a terrific movie (only that film also had an extraordinary script). Made for a paltry $25 million, pocket change for a major studio release these days, Open Range won’t bring Westerns permanently back into the cultural fold — in its absence, the genre’s conventions have already been absorbed in other styles of American cinema like the cop melodrama and the gangster film — but it might restore some dignity to the Costner persona. If only his next film is this plain and smart, Open Range might restore his credibility as a director, too.
Breathtaking widescreen photography in the virginal wilderness of Calgary.
Notes:
SEEN IT BEFORE MAYBE, BUT NOT FOR A LONG TIME: Visually and thematically, Costner pays tribute to several old-time masters besides Ford and Stevens. Cf. The quirks of male bonding versus the treatment of women in any Howard Hawks’ film, but especially Red River (1949), the climactic showdown and the fears of the townsfolk in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952), the narrative twists in Anthony Mann’s films with James Stewart, i.e. The Naked Spur (1953).
THE DARNED DOG: is named after Costner’s development company, TIG Productions.
Open Range
directed by Kevin Costner; screenplay by Craig Storper, from novel The Open Range Men by Lauran Paine; director of photography, James Munro; edited by Miklos Wright, Michael J. Duthie; music by Michael Kamen
with: Robert Duvall (Boss Spearman), Kevin Costner (Charley Waite), Annette Bening (Sue Barlow)
2 hr., 15 m.; filmed in Panavision (2.35:1); Tig Productions, Buena Vista, rated R
release date 8/15/03
Eric Barker is a writer and independent filmmaker living in Denver.
