Open Range
rated pg-13
type: Western
In general there are not alot of westerns anymore, the last real cowboy who had any kind of career was clint I have 2 facial expressions Eastwood. I pretty much grew up without the steady influence of westerns to teach me good from evil, and considering what became of the western in the mid to late 70s its probably a good thing, otherwise my penchant for wearing horrible horrible dark colors might have some deep freuadian meaning as opposed to what wear horrible dark colors really meant, that I probably shouldnt be allowed to dress myself or operate heavy machinery.
Vaguely somewhere through the years image of the duke the good cowboy, or the sleaze the clint cowboy got replaced with billy crystal the ghey and jewish cowboy. Im not real sure exactly when this change occurred and Im sure somewhere Louie Lamour is spinning in his grave a rate quick enough he could probably be turning a turbine somewhere in california giving at least 37 kids the power they need to download pr0n off the internet, that greedy lazy bastard. But the dead are notoriously filthy self centered bastards like that who only wish to gnaw on your less then average sized yet still supple braaaaains.
Now in general westerns are formulaic and perhaps that is why they have fallen from grace in recent times, but Kevin Costner puts on his best Tom Selleck face and shoulders the responsiblity for putting a final bullet into the back of the head of the western which has been trying to make a solid comeback with such pseudo westerns as Shanghai Noon, Dances with Monkey feces, Quigly down under, and any number of films about wyatt erp. In general you cant expect more then one western a year to surface and might even go a few consecutive years without being able to see one let alone a plausible and passable one.
The movie "Open Range" takes the ancient battle of ranchers vs free grazers, and each year I think their all stars in field hockey play each other every year for the golden calf, and the winners inflict the greatest injuries and break the most limbs. I think last year Dale "Bonecrusher" Shultz won with 3 decapitions and 13 broken bones (or bonies as they are called by the fans). After winning the golden calf last year Shultz was said to have uttered 'Im goin to Ye Olde Pr0n Shoppe' before he let loose a wild spit of chewin tabaccie that dribbled down his chin, slumped to the ground and promptly died. I should probably mention he was shot 2x by Buckie "Bootstrap" McGee who felt a lil more then P.O.ed that his pappee was decapitated during the game and unloaded his revovler into Shultz's back. Sadly the other 4 bullets went stray 2 comitting sodomy on some bending trees while the 3rd bullet struck the much beloved golden Calf giving it a pierced face which is so popular with the young folk today. Luckily the 4th bullet only hit the ministers wife between the eyes, and it was concensus made her a much more popular person among the townsfolk.
Ok so we get to the point, we know nothing of westerns, other then there is generally a bad ass, a love interest and one dman nice shoot out. This movie delivers all these things, but not in a timely fashion. A true fan of westerns told me that somewhere in the mix you show wide open spaces with lots of pastoral and what not, to show what the real west was, an open expanse of freedom, and of course hardcore drinking.
So in sumation if you like westerns you will like this move, as an above average movie. The characters while in many ways are one dimentional and the you can see the story develop in a very expected way, but then you arent expecting serious plot twists in a western, at no point can you expect the sheriff to halfway through the gun fight to say "Bob, Bob, I am your father!"
My only true complaint with this film is that film is 2 hours and 20 minutes long. Let me explain this to you, this is approximately 3x the length of the korean war, epic documentrys take less time to film, let alone release. But sadly Kevin when appearing in a baseball film or a western is allowed to terrible things like use protestants as floor shammies, or Equadorians as sticks for his dogs etc, and while I think such treatment of our good friends as chew toys or shammies is inappropriate but neither was the postman or waterworld, lets face it Kevin Costner is an evil Sadist somewhere on par with Satan or possibly Special K (the person not the cereal, I mean who can stand up to the evil that is cold cereal?).
Additionally the love interest in the film is pretty aged, but other then that its a fine gun fight at the end, the good guys stand on the moral highground and rain fire down upon the chaotic rancher (watch out Kevin hes an irishman!) and his henchman.
MMJ says, 'Gun voilence is not the answer, all the answers can be found in the bible if you would only look, perhaps 9 to 12 of them in a pillowcase and beating your antaginist until they go to Gods rest.'
MSBNGJ says, 'Wow a younger man falling for an aging older woman, truely a tenderhearted film suitable for Mr and Mrs Robinson alike.'
MAJ says, 'Sweet Moe! This film coulda been 40 minutes long and not missed a damn thing.'
RJ says, 'Ummm Blue Bonnet?'
PLOT :: 3
Acting :: 3
Blowed up (fx):: 2
Ass Kicking :: 2
OVERALL:: 2
Point of order if you like westerns or just Kevin Costner add another pt and make this an above average film you will definately enjoy. If you are not a Western fan you might want to skip this one unless you have ALOT of time to kill (140 minutes)