| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Open Range. Dir. by Kevin Costner. Touchstone Pictures, 2003. 145 mins.
Kevin Costner knows his film westerns, but it is far less certain that he knows his western history. Costner directs, co-produces, and co-stars in Open Range, based on a 1990 novel by Lauran Paine, The Open Range Men. Set in the northwestern United States in 1882, the film tells of a group of "free grazers," led by Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and Charley Waite (Costner) and including the childlike Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi) as well as the adolescent and Hispanic Button (Diego Luna), whose presence defines this quasi family as multicultural. The herdsmen clash with the regional oligarch Denton Baxter, the owner of a large ranch (played by the Irish actor Michael Gambon), who attempts to drive them from lands where his herds graze. Baxter's men beat Mose when he enters the town of Harmonville and then kill him on the open range. They also shoot and beat Button. As he did in his Oscar-winning film Dances with Wolves (1990), Costner attempts to reinvigorate the all-but-dead western genre in feature films by revising key conventions. In the manner of many classic westerns, this film dramatizes a dispute between competing economic interests in a settlement on the edge of civilization. True to its antecedents in the genre, Open Range tells of the triumph of the iconic ideals of U.S. nationalism—justice, freedom, and opportunity.	1
Like so many westerns, Costner's film attempts to walk the fine line between myth and history. Its visual style emphasizes the larger-than-life qualities of its heroes. Both Costner and Duvall are frequently shot in full close-up and framed against the larger-than-life sky. Duvall, older and possessing the more grizzled face, is framed in more low-angle shots than Costner. And both frequently deliver their lines as though they are auditioning for a remake of The Ten Commandments, offering words that seem to be far more significant than their denotations. This treatment of the film's stars is matched by a similarly reverential attitude toward the land, as we see any number of shots of the wide-open expanses on which the Rockies cast shadows.	. . .

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