Occasionally, there are the movies that truly transcend time to take the audience to places where they have never been. You could find yourself in a grittily authentic medieval court or an opulent English manor house or, in the case of `Open Range', on the expansive American West before the true impact of man was made evident.
The times were changing in the West in the middle of the 1880s. What once was as wide and open as one could imagine, now landowners, with the application of barbed wire, controlled fiefdoms of territory that they could run however they saw fit, and in the case of the movie, this antagonistic character would be Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon).
What Baxter has done in his sphere of influence, Harmonville, is close it off to free-grazers, or cow herds that roamed the West without a base of operations. This heavy-handed treatment conflicts with the values of Boss (Robert Duvall) and his right-hand man, Charley (Kevin Costner), the protagonist free-grazers.
Our two heroes are not typically violent people, but when Baxter's men attack their herd and kill one of their men (Abraham Benrubi) and severely wound another (Diego Luna), the two head into town for some old-fashioned Western justice. But while in town, a complication arises, as Charley falls for the town doctor's sister, Sue (Annette Bening). Now that he has something to stay alive for, he is about to be embroiled in a gun battle for what he sees as right versus the wrong of Baxter.
While Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall might be billed as the stars of the piece, the real `star' would have to be the visuals. With an unusual (at least in this century) minimal reliance on computer graphics, the story could have been done back in the heyday of Westerns, the 1950s. But in lieu of computer work, the scenery takes over and manages to just be jaw-droppingly beautiful. If you are not amazed by what you see, well then you don't know true beauty.
Not everything is as beautiful as the scenery though, as there were two things that were rather bothersome, in my opinion. Firstly, in every `true' Western, at least one protagonist needs to fall in love with a nice lady from town, so there was precedent for the Charley-Sue romance. But something about it just was jarringly discomforting-it wasn't so much the `square peg in a circular hole' but more like `an oval peg in the circular hole'-it wasn't quite clicking.
The other thing that wasn't as I would have liked it was the pacing. At times, the movie seemed to go by way too slowly as the dialogue wen t in a circuitous manner around the main points (something I've been occasionally guilty of-five dollars of writing for fifty cents of content). But everything reeked of authenticity, so I'm inclined to give this the benefit of a doubt.
`Open Range' is not your typical movie. Instead of all of the modern gilded trappings, it has an old-school reliance upon detail and natural visuals that make it a quaint and rather enjoyable film. 8 out of 10.
The times were changing in the West in the middle of the 1880s. What once was as wide and open as one could imagine, now landowners, with the application of barbed wire, controlled fiefdoms of territory that they could run however they saw fit, and in the case of the movie, this antagonistic character would be Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon).
What Baxter has done in his sphere of influence, Harmonville, is close it off to free-grazers, or cow herds that roamed the West without a base of operations. This heavy-handed treatment conflicts with the values of Boss (Robert Duvall) and his right-hand man, Charley (Kevin Costner), the protagonist free-grazers.
Our two heroes are not typically violent people, but when Baxter's men attack their herd and kill one of their men (Abraham Benrubi) and severely wound another (Diego Luna), the two head into town for some old-fashioned Western justice. But while in town, a complication arises, as Charley falls for the town doctor's sister, Sue (Annette Bening). Now that he has something to stay alive for, he is about to be embroiled in a gun battle for what he sees as right versus the wrong of Baxter.
While Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall might be billed as the stars of the piece, the real `star' would have to be the visuals. With an unusual (at least in this century) minimal reliance on computer graphics, the story could have been done back in the heyday of Westerns, the 1950s. But in lieu of computer work, the scenery takes over and manages to just be jaw-droppingly beautiful. If you are not amazed by what you see, well then you don't know true beauty.
Not everything is as beautiful as the scenery though, as there were two things that were rather bothersome, in my opinion. Firstly, in every `true' Western, at least one protagonist needs to fall in love with a nice lady from town, so there was precedent for the Charley-Sue romance. But something about it just was jarringly discomforting-it wasn't so much the `square peg in a circular hole' but more like `an oval peg in the circular hole'-it wasn't quite clicking.
The other thing that wasn't as I would have liked it was the pacing. At times, the movie seemed to go by way too slowly as the dialogue wen t in a circuitous manner around the main points (something I've been occasionally guilty of-five dollars of writing for fifty cents of content). But everything reeked of authenticity, so I'm inclined to give this the benefit of a doubt.
`Open Range' is not your typical movie. Instead of all of the modern gilded trappings, it has an old-school reliance upon detail and natural visuals that make it a quaint and rather enjoyable film. 8 out of 10.