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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Walt Disney Video
Salesrank: 1619
Released: January 20, 2004 |
| Our Price: $6.15 |
| Used Price: $1.85 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Packed with epic action, OPEN RANGE is a powerfully gripping story that's never been told until now, and stars Academy Award(R) winners Robert Duvall (1983 Best Actor, TENDER MERCIES) and Kevin Costner (1991 Best Director, DANCES WITH WOLVES), and Academy Award(R) nominee Annette Bening (1999 Best Actress, AMERICAN BEAUTY). A group of free grazers, four men trying to escape their past, are driving cattle and living off the land on the open range -- a place where nature makes the only laws. When a ruthless, evil rancher tries to run them out of town, the men's peaceful existence takes a tumultuous turn and ends in the grittiest, most explosive gunfight on film as two men battle a town for honor, justice, and a way of life that's quickly disappearing.
Description of Open Range:
Released almost exactly 11 years after Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Kevin Costner's Open Range proved yet again that the Western is the classic American genre. While it lacks the thematic impact of Eastwood's masterpiece, Costner's first film since 1997's ill-fated The Postman returns the actor/director of Dances With Wolves to the open prairies of America--in this case the free-range frontier of 1882--where legal "free-grazing" cattle drives were falling prey to empire-building land-owners. In the wake of territorial murder, free-grazing cowboys Boss (Robert Duvall) and Charley (Costner) seek vengeful justice against the ruthless rancher (Michael Gambon) who threatens their law-abiding survival. A feisty ally (the late Michael Jeter, in his next-to-final film role) and a doctor's sister (Annette Bening) offer support during climactic shootouts, masterfully staged with the shock and suddenness of real-life gunfire. Rich in character development and thick-hided humor, this handsome production redeemed Costner's directorial career with a well-told story (by Craig Storper, based on Lauran Paine's novel The Open Range Men), flawless performances, and stunning Canadian locations. --Jeff Shannon
Open Range Reviews:
Took Forever... 
2009-12-14 - DVD is in great condition and shows great! However, delivery time was terrible! Ordered another DVD on the same day from another seller and received it within 7-10 days. This took almost a month! Not good...not good at all!
Enclosing the open range 
2009-12-05 - It's a truism of frontier history that many early settlers were simply people who couldn't get along with their neighbors in civilized territory. Many of them were on the run from the law, from inconvenient family obligations, or from creditors. In the American west in the late nineteenth century, the situation was further complicated by the social and psychological aftermath of the Civil War, and especially of the ruthless bushwhacking and banditry that characterized the frontier border states. After the war, hundreds of men, desensitized to violence, socially rootless, economically destitute, well-armed and trained to kill, were loosed on the frontier. Some became lawmen, some became outlaws, and some tried to forget it all. One such man is Charlie (Kevin Costner), who has taken refuge in an isolated existence herding cattle on the unclaimed open range in the employ of "Boss" Spearman (Robert Duvall).
Unfortunately for Charlie, the open range of unclaimed land upon which freelance cattlemen could graze their herds is giving way to the development of towns and the inevitable attendant political and economic power grabs. The open range is becoming more and more constricted by the demands of civilization, and free-ranger herders like Charlie and Boss are doomed to clash with those who want to enclose the commons as private property. Some of those enclosers are not above using violence to eradicate anyone who stands in their way.
The scenery and cinematography in Open Range are gorgeous. Unlike the arid landscape of John Ford's classic Monument Valley westerns, this land looks lush enough to be capable of growing salable cattle. It's land productive enough to be worth fighting over.
As one might suspect, there's a substantial amount of violence in the film. It's not glamorous. It's chaotic and brutal and ugly. Open Range, like many historians, attributes the effectiveness of the most "successful" killers to their sociopathic desensitization to killing, their ability to unhesitatingly murder others in the blink of an eye, seizing the initiative and then taking advantage of the resulting disorientation to further decimate, intimidate, and disorganize the enemy. At one point in the film, as a threatened showdown looms, Charlie coldly and matter-of-factly analyzes the opposing side's "soldiers", identifying which ones are likely to freeze up or react slowly, who's likely to panic or fire wildly, and who poses the greatest threat and thus must be pre-emptively eliminated. Such men have difficulty fitting into a world where sets of rose-patterned teacups are cherished.
Unlike the townspeople of some classic films, the townspeople in Open Range are not mere props who stand around like bystanders and conveniently disappear once the bullets start to fly. Depending on the situation, they flee the town, hide, or shoot back with rifles and shotguns. When necessary, they drag bodies off the street and tend to the wounded.
There's an understated, slowly-developing romantic subplot, although some aspects of it seem forced. It's hard to imagine that an attractive woman with no apparent prejudice against men, such as Annette Bening's character, would have remained single for very long on the frontier, given the unbalanced ratio of men to women. But it is refreshing to, for once, see a middle-aged male lead slowly and haltingly develop a relationship with a believably middle-aged woman, rather than tumbling some 19-year-old sexpot. Bening is both authentically windworn and powerfully attractive in her role as an independent-minded and educated woman who quietly chafes against the social customs that keep her from achieving her ambitions, but has to live with them nonetheless. Just why she would be attracted to a borderline sociopath is not explained, but there's a nice teacup motif that helps ease things along.
Blooper alert: Be on the lookout for a close-up shot of a character standing next to a broken-down barbed wire fence which is totally absent from the long-angle shots immediately before and after. I felt sure that someone, sometime in the movie, was going to refer to the conflict between those who wanted to enclose land with barbed wire and those who wanted to move herds freely across it, but only this short blooper and one or two store signs in town even acknowledge the stuff. If there was a subplot here, most of it got left on the cutting-room floor. Perhaps Costner decided that portraying "good guys" Charlie and Boss vandalizing fences would cost them audience sympathy.
DVD Open Range 
2009-12-03 - I received the product in a most reasonable time. It was excellent condition and I must admit I was a bit skeptical in buying what I thought might be a used product. Condition of the material was as new and I am very well pleased ..
A modern classic
2009-10-19 - It seems that all good Westerns follow one of many basic formula's. Town oppressed by a despotic wealthy ranch owner, good guys gone bad, bad guy gone good etc. Open Range is no exception. Honest hard working cowboys herding their cattle are confronted by an evil (and I don't use that word loosely) ranch owner and are subjected to a host of unfair treatments. However, rather than just getting whipped and leaving town, Robert Duvall "Boss" and Kevin Costner "Charlie" make a point of seeing that justice is done. Both Duvall and Costner do a great job in this film and I think it will go down as one of the great westerns of our time.
The other characters in the story help bring this tale to life. Annette Benning (Sue) is great as the love interest and also gives a great performance.
To me one of the things that makes a film great is if I want to see what heppens next after the credits start to roll. This film was like that. If you are a fan of the Western Filme Genre you will want to see this film.
Great movie/great price
2009-09-12 - I had looked several different places for this movie to purchase for a friend as a gift but could not find it. My son asked me to go to this web site to look for another movie and we saw this one so we ordered it also. It was a "new" movie and I purchased it for less than half of what I expected. We received it extremely fast and our friend is thrilled to own it. Thanks Amazon!!!!
