By Brandon Nolta

Growing up, I didn’t like Westerns. I wasn’t into horses or the Old West; stories of gunslingers and frontier towns didn’t do much for me. Like many, I started to change my opinion on the genre when UNFORGIVEN came out, but it was a long time before I really came around to liking the genre. Then, I was able to appreciate the fun ones, like SILVERADO, the really good ones, like THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, and the great ones, like Kevin Costner’s 2003 epic OPEN RANGE. I know, you hear Costner and epic in the same sentence, you probably reach for the barf bag, perhaps plagued by flashbacks to THE POSTMAN. Well, get over it, because OPEN RANGE is different.

The film opens in Montana in the 1880s, with a quartet of free-grazing cowboys, led by Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and his lieutenant, Charley Waite (Kevin Costner). After a storm spreads their herd out, Boss and Charley send one of the younger men, Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi), into Harmonville, a town about a day’s ride away for supplies, while Boss, Charley and Button (Diego Luna) round up the herd. After a couple days too many goes by, Boss and Charley head into town to find Mose. This doesn’t sit well with Charley, who doesn’t like towns or people, and his happiness doesn’t increase when they find Mose in jail, beaten like a piñata. Since Mose is roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, it must have been a hell of a fight.

Turns out free-grazers aren’t well-liked in Harmonville, especially by Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon), the local rich man and biggest rancher around. Boss and Charley get Mose out, but he’s been beaten badly enough to need medical attention, so they find a doctor, and Charley catches the eye of the doc’s still-attractive spinster sister Sue (Annette Bening). After Mose gets treated, they head back to camp, only to find Baxter’s sending men to scout things out; after all, the future of the West is written in barbed wire, and free-grazers are a threat to that in Baxter’s mind. However, ranchers who buy the law and tell other men where they can and can’t go are a threat to Boss, so he and Charley head out to do some intimidating of their own.



Unfortunately, another set of men has headed out to Boss’s camp for some violence, and when Boss and Charley return, they find the camp trashed, Mose and the old camp dog dead, and Button shot and badly beaten. Boss and Charley bury the dead and take Button back into Harmonville to the doctor, and gradually the escalation begins. Boss and Charley mean to have vengeance, but Charley is falling for Sue, and while he needs the stone-cold killer within (turns out Charley was a commando during the Civil War), he wants the better angels of his nature to surface for her. Meanwhile, Boss and Charley make a few friends in town, including an ornery old stable owner (Michael Jeter), but when it comes time for the climactic gunfight, Boss and Charley are pretty much standing alone.

OPEN RANGE combines the best traditions of Hollywood Westerns: the mythic scope of the classic Western combined with the character emphasis and nuances of the modern version. Good and evil are clearly defined, yet the main characters aren’t just simple caricatures; Charley, for example, is a man for whom killing is easy and logical, and Costner gives an explanation of who to shoot first and why toward the end that elucidates this well. Yet, he’s undeniably a good man, loyal and steadfast, who appears to have a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Costner shades Charley nicely. Duvall slides easily into Boss Spearman, making him into a tough but generous man, whose fury at Baxter’s behavior tempers his basic decency into something harder. Bening and Gambon are equally at home in smaller roles, and Jeter, in his last live-action role, makes Percy the livery man the apotheosis of the crusty sidekick without veering into parody.


Fine acting and an intelligent, well-paced script make for rich ingredients, but what makes OPEN RANGE a cut above most other Westerns is an unusual attention to realistic detail and the willingness of the narrative to develop in its own time. The movie’s pace is slower than virtually any other Western I’ve ever seen, allowing the characters to become real on the screen without rushing in exposition, but there’s no sense of dragging or wasted momentum. The detail shows through in every frame, but the best example is the final gunfight, the most visceral, violent and realistic gun battle I’ve ever seen put to film. Bodies are thrown, smoke fills the frame, pistols roar like cannons; it’s not your grandpa’s gunfight in the streets. It’s an amazing topper to a well-drawn, satisfying story, and one that no Western, or drama, fan should miss.