Hey folks, Harry here... actually, technically Capone doesn't lit it rip with his Thompson on OPEN RANGE, he dug the hell out of the movie. The trailers have left me uninspired at the moment, but I give every Western a shot. Besides getting to see Annette Bening in a film is a rare treat these days! Here ya go...

Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. I actually skipped a preview of FREDDY VS. JASON last night to see Kevin Costner's OPEN RANGE. I don't regret it for a minute. The main reason is that I want to see FvJ with a paying audience, true enthusiasts; but the other reason is that I dig most of what Kevin Costner has done as both actor and director, and this film is right up there with his best stuff. So shoot me. Here's my review...

The experience of sitting through Kevin Costner’s third film as a director (after the hugely successful DANCES WITH WOLVES and the hugely unwatchable THE POSTMAN) is one of the more pleasant I can think of in a summer that has been filled with far more disappointments than positive surprises. Costner returns to the picturesque rolling plains of the American heartland (although the film was made in Alberta, Canada, and they never actually say in the movie where it takes place), and this is a good thing. It’s largely accepted that Costner’s best work involves either sports (usually baseball) or the old West, and I’m not going to dispute that belief. This film is among his finest as both a director and actor. Set just after the Civil War, Costner play Charley Waite a breed of cattleman known as a “free grazer,” meaning he doesn’t own a ranch but simply moves his cattle from place to place for sale, allowing them to graze in the largely open, unowned grasslands that existed in the United States at the time. To some professional ranchers, these free grazers were free loaders and were despised and severely dealt with by some. Waite is second in command of a four-man team led by Boss Spearman, played by Robert Duvall in one of his finest roles as an older gentleman. Anyone who has the pleasure of watching Duvall in the television mini-series “Lonesome Dove” has an idea of how he plays this kind of role. He’s a man of few words, a simple sense of right and wrong, and a black-and-white idea of justice.

The film starts out slow and deliberate. We get to know each of the four men. Abraham Benrubi (“E.R.’s” receptionist Gerry) is Mose, a giant hulk of a man with a sweet disposition. As Spearman puts it, “He never starts a fight, but he finishes a lot of them.” Diego Luna is the 16-year-old newbie Button, who was recently “adopted” by the group and is still hot-tempered and inexperienced. For a while, we just take in the characters and the landscape. A torrential rain storm does a little damage to their camp site, and they fix it. In need of suppliers, the team sends Mose to a nearby town for supplies. When he doesn’t return after a couple of days, Spearman and Wait go looking for him, only to find out he’s in jail after a brawl with some men hired by the local rancher boss Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon). Baxter and the local marshall (James Russo) warn the free grazers to get the hell out of the area before some other tragedy befalls them. In need of medical attention, Mose is taken to a nearby doctor (Dean McDermott) and his sister, Sue, played by the lovely Annette Bening, who takes an innocent liking to Charley.

Upon returning to their camp, the men devise a plan to get a little revenge on the ranch men who beat up Mose, and hopefully stop any further attack on their group. Boss and Charley make a late night camp site raid of three men on their way to rough up the free grazers, but while they’re gone, Mose and Button are attacked by another group. Mose is shot in the head and Button is near death. With hardly a word between them Boss and Charley know what they must do. After dropping off Button at the doc’s, the two men make their presence and purpose known in the town. They aren’t so much recruiting others to their cause as simply telling people to stay out of the way during the oncoming battle. All of this leads to a spectacularly staged gunfight that looks and sounds about as real as any I’ve ever seen in a Western. The gun fire sounds like cannons going off in your ear, the blood...is very red and plentiful. Costner does a great job making certain you know where every player is during this shoot out, and that makes for a far more tension-filled battle.

Amidst all of this seriousness, OPEN RANGE is also a very funny film, most of which is supplied by Duvall (with Costner as straight man) and the late, great Michael Jeter (in his final performance). But what really impressed me was the attention to detail that Costner gives to his time and setting. Take a look at the way the saloon is designed. It’s not a great dance hall with a chandelier and big bar; it’s a dark, smokey, crowded place where women are nowhere to be seen. When another rain storm hits the town, a river literally runs through it. I particularly liked the way the townsfolk don’t need much convincing to turn on Baxter. He starts out the film as a very big, scary force in the community, but the more we see and hear him, the smaller and less scary he becomes. And the more we find out about Boss and Charley, the more we change our opinions of them ever so slightly. Despite knowing each other for nearly 10 years, it takes the possibility of death for them to open up to each other even a little. Also quite charming is the verbal fumbling between Charley and Sue. The romance might be the weakest part of the film, but Bening sells her character as the woman on the brink of giving up on ever finding a good man to marry and willing to accept Charley’s many faults.

Despite Costner’s obvious affection for the Old West, this is not a film explicitly about American values or Americana in general. This is a film about a era in peacekeeping that doesn’t exist anymore, for better or worse. Charley seems genuinely regretful that the situation must resort to violence, but neither man sees any alternative. If there is a message in OPEN RANGE, it’s a similar one to that in UNFORGIVEN. In both films, a major character comes from a history of violence and is now trying to live a simple, quiet life that is threatened. The bottom line is the OPEN RANGE is a great film, and I’m a little saddened that it’s coming out in the summer, where its risk of getting lost or ignored seems a lot greater. I hope this movie does well, because I’d like its success to send a message to Costner to stop making films like DRAGONFLY and WATERWORLD and stick to quality projects like this one.

Capone

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