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Open Range Starring Robert Duvall, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon and Kevin Costner Screenplay by Craig Storper Directed by Kevin Costner website: http://openrange.movies.go.com/

IN SHORT: A ponderous tale of the ponderosa. [Rated R for violence. 135 minutes]

All the gorgeous landscape and cinematography in the world can't help a two-bit story which gives an audience no time to identify with characters and makes no effort to properly distinguish the bad guys from their mob. This is the problem with Open Range, at least for us. We've been seeing rave quotes for weeks and, now that we've planted for the film, wonder if the raves are coming just because Hollywood doesn't make Westerns with the regularity that they used to. Give a cowboy fan a half decent film, which is what Open Range is, half decent, and they'll hoop and holler just like extras in a rodeo scene.

For those who never paid attention in, or who have long since forgotten American History class, in the mid to late 19th century, the "wild" west was just that. Tremendous amounts of unclaimed land cleared of the natives by the Army, were ripe for settlement or use as a route to new beginnings for the immigrant population that fed this country. Open Range is a story involving four men who drove cattle across that land and who never showed much inclination for settling down in any of those prairie towns. They move their herd in 1882, a time when land barons like Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon) were actively trying to shut those operations down. In the case of our stars, Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and his second Charley Waite (Kevin Costner) and their workers Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and Button (Diego Luna), Baxter's thugs mug one of the kids. When Boss and Charlie head into the town of Harmonyville to find their man, they're confronted and extorted by Baxter and his lackey lawman Marshall Poole (James Russo).

Baxter, basically, tells 'em to get out of town. They do. But they're followed out by more masked thugs, intent on rustling the herd and leaving bodies behind. They almost succeed. One survivor is left with Doc Barlow (Dean McDermott) and his wife, Sue Barlow (Annette Bening) and Boss and Charlie head off to get revenge on Baxter and a mob of hired guns.

There's a deliberate mistake in that last paragraph. Do not write us to correct it. The storyline in Open Range is so fragile that to tell you the truth would steal one of the few surprises in the story. Let's just say that Costner, who's built a career by playing cold, emotionless, hard-hearted men is perfectly cast in this role. The problem comes when that emotionless character is struck by an event that requires emotional reaction. Putting the change in the dialog doesn't work for us. If you plant, you'll understand.

Of the locals, stable owner Percy (Michael Jeter) provides most of the relief, comic and otherwise. The bigger problem is that all the "bad guys" are so two dimensional that they're fairly indistinguishable from each other. All the fine touches are in the background activity -- residents of the town, knowing a gunfight is coming, flee for the hills. Undeveloped is a theme of resentment among the townspeople against the boss Baxter. It may be there but, at a running time of well over two hours, the excess scenery and wasted time dilutes any development that may exist.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Open Range, he would have paid . . .

$3.00

The only reason to see Open Range on the big screen is for the scenery.

	Click to buy films by Kevin Costner
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