Open Range

Year: 2003

Grade: B

Country: USA

Director: Costner

Review

as far as my memory and knowledge go, this is kevin costner’s best directorial effort. dances with wolves is good, but too long and, from what i remember, not as artistic as this. i just looked it up and he’s only directed four films, so this is officially his best effort as a director. he’s been in better films and has had better performances – jfk, a perfect world and the untouchables to name a few. that being said, this film is a solid one with good performances from benning, costner and duvall. there’s nothing all that new here, i mean if you’ve seen a good sampling of westerns you’re not going to be surprised by anything. it has shades of winchester 73, shane, unforgiven and the good, the bad and the ugly, but isn’t as good as any of them. the ending was a bit lengthy and happy for my tastes, but it certainly wasn’t bad enough to ruin the film. i think that the screenplay was the weakest part of the film. there were a few cheap ploys to pull the audience towards the protagonists, or away from the antagonists. on the flipside, the strongest point of the film was its cinematography. interiors and exteriors were shot with equal skill. there were enough artsy touches to make me aware of the cinematography, but it never grew pedantic. some of costner’s coverage editing seemed illogical, but i think it may have also opened up the action a bit. there were times when two people would be talking to each other and it would have some typical coverage like over the shoulder shots, or medium shots of them within the frame facing each other, but then he would throw in a longer shot under a fallen tree with them in the background or something like that. it threw me off a bit, but it was also sort of nice because it wasn’t so by the book. seijun suzuki did this to a greater extent in “branded to kill.” with a few revisions in the screenplay it could have been a very good film. p.s. james muro did the cinematography – his first effort as a cinematographer – but he did work as an assistant sound man on basket case. very cool.