A retrospective by Forrest Humphrey
Continuing with Robert Duvall month is one of the movies that got me into Westerns when I was little: 2003's “Open Range.” Starring Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall, the film introduces the two men as “free grazers”, cowboys who drive cows across the land to markets and sell them for a living. Costner plays Charlie, a Civil war veteran stricken with PTSD from his violent past and Duvall plays his employer, “Boss” Spearman, with a couple other supporting characters to assist in driving the cows. When they near the town of Harmonville, the cowboys are attacked by men hired by local cattle baron Denton Baxter, where some of the crew are killed or badly injured. With this violent act, Costner and Duvall slowly rally the rest of the town to their side and take the fight back to Baxter, leading to a frankly fantastic final showdown.
Open Range is a fair bit grittier than the typical Western. As mentioned, the heroes are not young men in their prime but “getting on in years” with troubled pasts weighing them down and the gunfights are brutal, with shotgun blasts flipping people off their feet and many rarely dying cleanly from revolvers. That being said, its not quite the vicious deconstruction of the genre that “Unforgiven” was, simply a more realistic and subdued take on the genre and the film stands out greatly for taking this route.
The film is carried brilliantly by Duvall and Costner, both of whom are immensely talented actors and their chemistry is fantastic. Their dynamic is atypical as well, given Costner is younger but also the more quiet and emotionally scarred character while Duvall, despite being older, gets to play the more lighthearted character. That's not to say the movie is a comedy, far from it, but Duvall will get you to laugh through the film when the mood calls for it; and when its time for “Boss” to open up in an emotional scene or get intimidating in a tense one, Duvall carries it all with aplomb.
“Open Range” isn't even the first time Duvall has played a cowboy, not by a long shot, as many might know him from “True Grit” where he played villain Ned Pepper against John Wayne. That is to say, “Open Range” was made by men who know how Westerns work. it stands as one of the better films in a long running and very saturated genre. And while the focus of this review is on Duvall's performance, I would at least like to mention the film's beautiful cinematography and score. “Open Range” succeeds on all fronts, and if you have any interest in Westerns at all, you should track it down.
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