Critically acclaimed in some quarters, but snubbed by the Oscars, Open Range is a throw back to the great John Wayne Westerns of the past. With the exception of a few films, like Tombstone or Wyatt Earp, you rarely see Westerns hyped on the big screen anymore. Open Range is the exception to the rule. With an all-star cast headed by Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, and Annette Benning, Open Range is filled with all the majestic beauty of the rolling plains, small town frontier life, and shootouts between the good guys and the bad. If you like the Western genre, then you’ll love Open Range.
Friends Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall), Charley Waite (Kevin Costner), Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi), and Button (Diego Luna) enjoy a life of freedom and abundance as they free-graze their cattle across the open plains of the Old West. Living a life of honor and tranquility, each is content with the wonder of his daily experience. But each man’s personal paradise is upended when the men drive their cattle near the town of Harmonville. Local rancher Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon) hates free-rangers, especially on his land, and he uses the local sheriff, Sheriff Poole (James Russo) to control the town through a campaign of fear and terror.
But Boss and Charley are not the type of men who back down from a fight, especially when their friends are hurt. The differing goals of each group of men leads to an inevitable bloody showdown. In the meantime, Charley falls in love with the local doctor’s sister Sue Barlow (Annette Benning). At times funny, at others romantic, Open Range is a film the entire family can enjoyÂ…
Utilizing modern day cinematography and the natural beauty of the American frontier, Open Range provides a modern viewers with an idea of the hard life such people lived. The only major point in which it lacks realism (at least as far as I can ascertain, and I’m no expert) is in the final scenes when the good guys and bad guys finally have a showdown gun battle. This prolonged dance of the six-shooters ends up killing about seventy-five times as many people as the famous shootout at the OK Corral. Just as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre would hardly merit a mention on today’s evening news, mass murder on this scale just did not happen in those days. However, the shootout in Open Range is the high-point of the film, and the rate at which they stave off the ultimate conflict builds to the climax of the movie with a crescendo effect (which wouldn’t work without the bloody gun battle).
In the end, Open Range is a highly entertaining movie. Lots of conflictÂ… Lots of shootingÂ… Man against man violence. If you like that, then you’re in luck with this one. The only question you need ask yourself (which in the old days you didn’t have to ask yourself) is whether or not the good guys will win. Do they? You’ll have to find out for yourself, and I highly recommend it. Open Range is Kevin Costner at his best – knee-deep in American history, whether it’s the open plains of the West or the baseball diamonds of Iowa and North Carolina – that’s why Open Range is a definite must-see filmÂ…
About the Author
Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a movie review site [http://thedvdreport.blogspot.com] where you can find more articles like this one of the Open Range (DVD) Review [http://thedvdreport.blogspot.com/2006/02/open-range-dvd.html].
JOHN WAYNE In Music & Poster Art 10-CDs/1-DVD Box & Book
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John Wayne Magnet~ When You Come Up Against Trouble~ Approx 2.5 x 3.5 … |
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John Wayne Magnet~ A Man’s Got To Have A Code, A Creed To Live By … |
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John Wayne Magnet~ A Man’s Got To Do What A Man’s Got To Do $4.95 … |
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Hondo (Full Screen) $3.15 Although scarcely seen in its original 3-D, and entirely out of sight for a decade and a half after its producer-star died, Hondo has maintained a high rep among John Wayne fans–and it wasn’t even directed by Howard Hawks or John Ford. (Actually, Ford did shoot some second-unit stuff while visiting Wayne on location.) Half-breed Hondo, companioned only by an antisocial dog, tends to be more sympa… |
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Revelation $2.92 SONS OF SYLVIA Ashley Clark – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, fiddle Austin Clark – dobro, lap steel, vocals Adam Clark – mandolin, acoustic guitar, vocals “Crazy how you can have everything but time,” Sons of Sylvia frontman Ashley Clark sings in “Revelation,” the band’s autobiographical tale of finding destiny through music and the unbreakable bond of brotherly love. “And I don’t know where… |
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Cowboys $3.75 Notorious as the first John Wayne film that does the unthinkable–subject Wayne’s character to a nasty fate after only a short time–the 1972 Cowboys isn’t much more interesting beyond that. The story finds Wayne playing a rancher who takes 11 boys on a cattle drive. They run into a nut case (Bruce Dern) who deprives the kids of their leader, and the rest of the film is a tale of revenge. Mark Ryd… |
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The Alamo [Restored Original Director's Cut] [VHS] $3.39 John Wayne drew on what he learned from John Ford, Howard Hawks, and practically everyone who directed him during his long career when he made his own directorial debut on this labor of love. The Alamo is a sprawling, unabashedly patriotic epic of the sacrifice made by 187 men defending the Alamo from Santa Ana’s bigger and better equipped army. Wayne stars as Col. Davy Crockett, the straight-talk… |
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The Shootist [VHS] $5.39 The last film of John Wayne could not have been more fitting, full of details that can’t help but make one reflect upon his legacy in the movies and his life as a star. Wayne plays a career gunfighter in the autumn of his life, trying to hang up his pistols after he discovers he’s dying of cancer. Boarding in the house of an attractive widow (Lauren Bacall) and her son (Ron Howard), Wayne’s chara… |
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True Grit [VHS] $2.84 A wonderful/rueful running gag in El Dorado involves the Edgar Allan Poe line “Ride, boldly ride” being mangled by toupee-wearer Wayne into “Ride, baldy, ride.” Two years later, in True Grit, Wayne put the joke in italics by donning an eyepatch and several inches of girth to play cantankerous territorial marshal Rooster Cogburn. Critics belatedly noticed that he could be a marvelously entertaining… |
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True Grit $8.25 A 14-year-old girl needs a man with “true grit” to help her bring in the fugitive who killed her father. That she settles on Rooster Cogburn–a one-eyed, booze-soaked, potbellied U.S. marshal on the downward curve of his career in law enforcement–is the glorious springboard for all versions of True Grit: the Charles Portis novel, the 1969 western that won an Oscar for John Wayne, and the 2010 Coe… |