Review: Open Range

Last year, Todd Haynes won universal acclaim for his tribute to 1950s melodrams with Far From Heaven. Though far less formally playful, Kevin Costner's Open Range is nearly just as much of a tribute as Haynes' film was. Every bit a "Big Country" picture, Open Range is full of beautiful panoramas and wide open spaces. Costner patiently lets his cameras eye roll across hills and through fields. Simultaneously, he imbues his film with old-fashioned morality, often allowing his characters to vocalize his ideas, but just as often letting the action speak for itself.

Costner and Robert Duvall play "free-grazers", cowboys who roam the countryside, letting their cattle feed upon whatever land is available, be it public or private. Michael Gambon plays the Irish immigrant land baron who kills one of their hired hands and attempts to ride them out of town. In Costner's Old West, the good and bad guys are as easily identifiable as they were 50 and 60 years ago. The free-spirited cowboys must make a stand against the tyrannical rancher, while Costner also vies for the attention of the local doctor's luminous sister (a slightly out-of-place Annette Bening).

As he did in Clint Eastwood's masterpiece A Perfect World, Costner plays a man with a violent past. While in that film, he held in the pain and torment of violence, ultimately spilling it forth in fits of unbridled rage, here Costner is the picture of controlled complexity. He stores his dark past deep within and brings it out at his leisure, expertly dispatching his enemy when the time comes.

As dedicated to displaying the beauty of the Old West as Costner is, he also realizes the need to somewhat pare back the flashy violence of past Westerns. Here, the staging of the final shootout is expertly crafted. A storied gunslinger is put down by a single bullet to the head. Costner's confident, steady shooter sends men either fleeing or dying. His command of the scene, both in front of and behind the camera is some of the best work he's ever done. Indeed, this is the first film I've really liked Costner in since A Perfect World, ten years ago.

Though the film's simplicity is often too obvious, and its platitudes too perfectly pronounced, Open Range remains a film of beauty and power, if for no other reason than its dedication to classical storytelling.

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