Charley (Kevin Costner), the older Boss (Robert Duvall), the oversized Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and 16 year old Button (Diego Luna) are driving their cattle across the prairie, the last of the freegrazers. It’s 1882 and change is in the air in the wild West, as new landowners grow increasingly resentful of these cowboys. Trouble breaks out when the small group comes across the lands around Harmonville. The local Marshall is on the payroll of Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon) whose men beat up first Mose and then Button, in an attempt to drive them out of the area. But Boss and Charlie, with the emotional support of the local doctor’s sister, Nurse Sue (Annette Bening), take a stand.

	"Open Range" Trailer
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From the old fashioned font of the opening credits to the old fashioned pastoral score, Open Range is an old fashioned movie, paying tribute to the clichees of the Western, romanticising the free range men or freegrazers whose era was coming to an end in the 1880s. Unfortunately, this also means romanticising the violent gunfights, and in the post Bowling For Columbine era, the film is on rocky ground trying to make the good guys look good.

But it does do that, mostly thanks to Michael Gambon’s portrayal of the “ruthless, evil rancher” who controls the new little village of Harmonville. If we couldn’t boo-hiss this character, Kevin Costner’s cold bloodied killer, Charley Waite, would seem less the clear cut goodie.

This confrontation of the freegrazers, represented by Charley Wait and his trail ‘boss’ Boss (Robert Duvall), and the new ranchers who own the land on which the freegrazers used to herd cattle freely, is made to seem like the pursuit of “freedom, justice, honour and friendship” as the filmmakers put it. But it doesn’t really pan out that way.

If America’s gun culture wasn’t born and bred in the West, you’d never know it; the arguments are won by the traditional gunfights of the old fashioned Western, now made even more romantically graphic by modern moviemaking techniques.

Based on a novel, the movie has the benefit of rounded characters and a well developed storyline. It also boasts a top cast which helps it over the hill of its politically incorrect – and the genuinely morally questionable – downsides. But you have to be seduced by the grandeur of the images of wide open spaces to forget that the film’s themes are actually not about freedom or freegrazing – but about pride. That’s the negative flipside of honour, if you like, and more in evidence than genuine honour.

There is plenty of corn in Open Range, but it’s well treated corn, far too beautiful to look at (in the ugly circumstances) and yet so painstakingly put together, so sincere in its intentions that it’s difficult not to admire it. Entertaining? Sure.

OPEN RANGE (M)

(US/Germany)

CAST: Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Michael Jeter, Diego Luna, James Russo, Abraham Benrubi, Dean McDermott, Kim Coates

DIRECTOR: Kevin Costner

SCRIPT: Craig Storper (novel by Lauran Paine)

RUNNING TIME: 139 minutes

VIDEO DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Entertainment

VIDEO RELEASE: June 17, 2004 (Also available on DVD)