Open Range (2004, VHS)

Westerns are movies that I seem to always think I won t like, but end up liking once I see them. You d think after a while, I d drop this prejudice, and come clean about my affinity for the old west. But for some reason, I still hold out. Which is why I didn t give Open Range much of a second thought. For one, it s a western. And for another, it s a western with Kevin Costner. Although I like Costner, given he s in the right role, he is not exactly someone I will go out of my way to watch. Ditto for Robert Duvall and Annette Benning. So I wasn t sure what to expect when I sat down to watch...

Charley Waite : Well you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying Open Range 2003 Directed by Kevin Costner Robert Duvall as Boss Spearman Kevin Costner as Charley Waite Annette Bening as Sue Barlow Michael Gambon as Denton Baxter Michael Jeter as Percy The Storyline / plot Boss Spearman runs a small free grazing outfit on open range. He has a herd of cattle as well as horses. Free grazing is common practice in the west during those days but like everything else, had its obstacles. Spearman had three cow punchers that worked for him, Side rod Charlie Waite,...

Somewhere in the midst of "Open Range," the more-grand-than-not, would-be epic cowboy film of 1882 Montana, Robert Duvall's grizzled "Boss" Spearman and Kevin Costner's jaded Charley Waite are astride their mounts herding cattle to market against a mountain range backdrop that takes your breath away. Spearman makes a comment to the effect that the scene around them is "pretty as a picture." Waite chimes in with the segue, "And that's why someone once said a picture is worth a thousand words." Before you rightly jump up and scream in disbelief that no smelly, semi-literate cowpokes somewhere...

When OPEN RANGE was released in the moviehouses I passed on it. Like some other folks I am a little ambivalent about Kevin Costner's projects, and I decided to take a pass on this one. I guess I still have a little trouble with the memory of Costner every time I think about those wonderful scenes of him relieving himself in the opening shots of WATERWORLD. However, since I am at heart a lover of American westerns, I figured I finally had to see this one, even if it was one of Kevin's babies. So I rented it on DVD, and, shock of all shocks, I was very pleasantly surprised with what Costner...