Open Range

A small, modest, intimate western with few characters and few things between them. A more complicated plot wouldn’t have hurt anything, but that’s also true of the level of viewer appreciation. Kevin Costner has a feel for the characters’ psychology and he knows how to direct actors. And I don’t care that the sky in the background looks like a studio screen lit with floodlights. If Costner had had a bigger budget, maybe he wouldn’t have paid so much attention to the essentials. (01/27/2004)

The first half is filled with beautiful, almost kitschy imagery (I almost expected a sharp cowboy face to appear and invite me to enjoy a Marlboro) and a free-flowing plot with well-written dialogue and likeable main characters. They aren’t the infallible gunslingers with a colt low at the waist who are so brilliantly parodied in Lemonade Joe, but true cowboys for whom manly honor and honesty are above all else. Duvall and Costner play their roles superbly, and thanks to their performance the viewer easily becomes familiar with their fates and will cheer for them all the more during the final, quite successful shootout. However, I think that the editing scissors could have helped at times, for the sake of more plot build-up, and I also had the impression of a set-up ending at the end. Overall, three and a half *. For the first time in a long time, Kevin Costner at least gave a bit of a flashback to his old days when he charmed the movie world with Dances With Wolves. (07/16/2004)

There is nothing more captivating than a classically constructed story of men who, despite their rudeness, fight for direct ideals of courage and honor. But from such an environment, I never really feel like it, and Costner doesn't feel like it either. Although I can't point out a single scene that would be purposeless and unnecessary, the running time is unbearably drawn out. The added passage after the decisive shootout speaks for itself. All the interiors of the spit-filled saloons, but especially the exteriors of dusty towns and endless plains, are exactly to my liking, but just watch any part of Dances with Wolves and you can see that Kevin was in a completely different league. (07/09/2007)

I always knew that Kevin Costner is good, and here he serves a smart film with characters that have proper depth and where the phrase “instant romance” cannot be used. The way the screenwriter develops the characters is surprising, without pathos or unnecessarily extended scenes. And the final approximately 15-minute shootout is really well-crafted. (04/27/2004)

An honest western that illustrates in perhaps a somewhat linear (yet basically almost flawless) way that evil must be confronted and fought to the end, even in the face of what seems a losing battle. Overall, this is a story told very slowly and with a wonderful build all the way through, graced in the end by one of the most impressive shootouts I've ever seen. It's very "Costnerian", but I don't mean that pejoratively in the slightest. [80%] (01/16/2022)