Functioning as it did in a disreputable genre, Kevin Costner’s Open Range received none of the year-end plaudits it deserved. Instead, the period Americana slot was filled by Anthony Minghella’s preordained Oscar nominee, Cold Mountain, a joylessly faithful best-seller adaptations that manages to transplant all the book’s requisite plot points yet still sucks all the essence from novelist Charles Frazier’s mythological and moralistic Civil War revisionism. Substituting Margaret Mitchell for Nathaniel Hawthorne, Minghella comes up with a noble dud; Costner’s naturalist reimagining of hoary Western tropes was instead revitalizing, a project predicated on faith, not gold statuettes. Likewise, the swoony laconic antihero everyone was desperate to extract from Jude Law’s shallow meanderings was right there onscreen in Open Range, evenly split between magnetic Costner and his venerable, more idiosyncratic costar Robert Duvall. Likewise, Nicole Kidman’s silly righteous petticoat routine is outclassed by the more delicate and proactive Annette Bening, similarly housebound and waiting for her barely-acquainted amour to return. Open Range, stunningly photographed by former camera operator James Muro and culminating with the most precisely and thrillingly edited shootout in many a moon (even Unforgiven’s climax seemds lethargic by comparison), deserves mention if not only for its impressive earnestness. It follows a group of free-grazing cowherds who come in contact with a nefarious sherrif intent on seeing their nomad ways wiped off the late 19th-century map. Since Costner and Duvall initiate the less than morally airtight high noon denouement in retribution for a murdered compatriot, Open Range earns mention alongside 2003's other higher profile revenge flicks (Kill Bill, Mystic River, Irreversible, 21 Grams). But unlike the others, Costner’s film seems more at peace within its own time and place; it has a composed energy—watch for Costner’s lovely, hesitant courting of Bening, Duvall’s extended pleasure at tasting fine imported chocolate. The opening sequence, with its stunningly timed fade-outs set to an evocative rainstorm sequence, effectively condenses and expands the temporality of a narrative reflected in cobalt blue mountain chains, swaying tall grasses, and silvery rain puddles. Is this Terrence Malick’s Stagecoach?
—MK