OPEN RANGE

Rating: 2

At the beginning of OPEN RANGE, Kevin Costner’s latest directing, acting and producing effort, a wagon becomes stuck in the mud after a torrential rainstorm. Kevin and his co-star Robert Duvall do get the wagon rolling again. Alas, the film itself remains mired in situ.

Kevin returns here to the western genre and he’s certainly got the eye for those sweeping panoramic shots of wide open country and an ear for swelling music to cue the audience that this is a big picture. At over two hours, yes, it is big, and the scenery is pretty and that’s all well and good except for the fact that director Kevin keeps all the actors on screen at an energy level that wavers between laconic and stoic and stoic may be overstating the case just a smidge.

Kevin is Charlie Waite, a guy struggling with his checkered past. We know he’s struggling because Kevin squints his eyes and strikes mock-heroic poses while staring off into space. In the present, Charlie is a free-range cattle guy who with Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) runs cattle over other people’s land, taking advantage of the open range of the title that gives them the legal right to let their stock graze their fill and then move on. Things are okay, despite the weather’s penchant for unleashing cloudbursts, until they come to a town run by corrupt rancher Baxter (Michael Gambon), who has the sheriff in his pocket and a hankering for Boss and Charlie’s cattle that are currently dining on his land. Before you can say “Yee Ha!” one of Charlie’s men is killed, another one is wounded and Charlie and Boss are off on a mission of justice that entails taking on the whole town single-handed. Or two-handed, as it were.

The script by Craig Storper, based on the novel by Lauran Paine, is formulaic with plot developments telegraphed long before they happen, thereby killing what little element of surprise there might have been. Three guesses what happens to the dog that’s too cute for words, or to the china that is someone’s only remaining family heirloom. The writing is also rife with platitudes and aphorisms, such as pictures being worth a thousand words and exhortations to always look on the bright side. There is also a love-at-first sight romance, because, despite the running time, there’s no time for any other kind, between Charlie and town doctor’s sister, played by Annette Benning, who wears little makeup and looks bravely and beautifully her age. If only she weren’t reduced to the spunky gal role.

After Charlie and Boss deliver patients to the town doctor, they wander, seemingly endlessly, around the town itself as rain pours and streets flood. Finally, the clouds part, the sun comes out and we’ve arrived at the shoot-out. Things do pick up a bit here, what with all the bullets and the mayhem. And yet, before any shooting begins, as the good guys and the bad guys face down each other guns drawn and tempers flared, do they begin to shoot? No. First they hurl a volley of taunts at one another, an astonishing combat choice that will be repeated. You have to wonder, how could they be so sure that no one would start shooting until the taunting was over?

After his recent string of self-directed box office disasters, Kevin has wisely hedged his bets here by casting Duvall as Charlie’s boss and best pal. That his character’s name is Boss just makes things easier to keep track of. Duvall adds ginger spice to even the blandest of concoctions, as he proved last year as Robert E. Lee in the otherwise God awful GODS AND GENERALS. He can sit a horse and watch the horizon with an authority and gravitas that pretty much sums up the story of how the west was won. Michael Jeter as an eccentric livery stable owner sparkles with a hard-bitten eccentricity that is also a welcome relief.

OPEN RANGE will not kill the western genre. It’s a tradition of filmmaking that has too rich a history and too sterling a track record to disappear entirely. Its comeback, though, will no doubt be delayed by Kevin’s foray into the frontier. I’ve never missed Gary Cooper more than while watching Kevin try to fill those boots.