Kevin Costner directs and stars in this entertaining drama about a ragtag band of 19th-century “free-grazers” forced into a bloody showdown with a tyrannical rancher who rules a frontier town.
Though it’s a bit too clumsy and maudlin in parts to merit consideration alongside Costner’s Academy Award-winning “Dances With Wolves,” the richly-textured “Open Range” boasts enough eye-popping scenery and well-choreographed gun battles to make it one of the better westerns in recent memory.
Costner plays Charley Waite, a reticent cattleman with a dangerous past who hooks up with the wise old Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall at his understated finest) to shepherd a herd across the picturesque American West (though the stunning vistas were actually shot in Canada).
In the bosom our unspoiled prairie, Charley and Boss have found comfort, if not peace. But trouble arrives when the men and their young charges, Mose (Abraham Benrubi of “ER”) and Button (“Y Tu Mama Tambien” star Diego Luna), come upon an area controlled by an ill-tempered rancher named Baxter (Sir Michael Gambon).
Baxter has designs to kill the free-grazers and lay claim to their cattle, but Boss, of course, isn’t about to roll over and die. Neither is Charley, a former gun for hire with a still-itchy trigger finger and nothing to lose … … that is, until he meets the town doctor’s sweet sister Sue (Annette Bening, doing her best in an underwritten part). Smitten, Charley finds his killer instincts at odds with his desire to settle down with a good woman.
Of course, these feelings, along with Mose’s execution at the hands of Baxter’s henchmen, raise the stakes considerably at the ultimate gun battle — the high point of “Open Range.”
Though at times, Costner’s over-romanticized view of the cowboy way of life registers a bit too high on the corn-o-meter, the film’s action sequences are first-rate and the principals deliver solid performances. All in all, “Open Range” is a film worth saddling up for. (Rated R for violence. Running time: 135 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 15, 2003. Read the original PDF.