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Open Range
Buena Vista Pictures


7.3

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 43 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for violence

Starring Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Michael Jeter, Diego Luna, James Russo, and Abraham Benrubi

Academy-Award winning director Kevin Costner ("Dances with Wolves") helms this traditional Western tale of a way of life that is quickly disappearing. (Touchstone Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Western
WRITTEN BY:	Craig Storper Lauran Paine (novel The Open Range Men)
DIRECTED BY:	Kevin Costner
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 20, 2004 Video: January 20, 2004 Theatrical: August 15, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	135 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's a gorgeously atmospheric, perfectly cast, beautifully crafted oater of the old school, made with heaps of integrity, no gimmicks and few concessions to the box office. Its only real flaw is that it strains a bit too hard to be a "classic" western.

Film Threat Kevin Carr

Open Range gets better the deeper you get into the story.

The New Yorker David Denby

In this handsomely traditional movie, Kevin Costner has tried to fix the Western myth for all time in the stern contours of Duvall’s face and the guttural beauty of his voice. [1 September 2003, p. 130]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

There's a lot in this movie, simple, big, small and exciting. It's the year's first serious contender for big prizes. What's not to like about this picture?

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

An imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Say what you like, think what you will, scoff if you have to (and you will definitely have to), but in the final analysis Kevin Knows Westerns.

Time Richard Corliss

It's a real and rare pleasure to see Costner and Duvall together -- these masters of intense passivity, who know how to be watched when they're listening.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A fine, heartfelt film, sometimes harrowing in its violence but blessedly free of pretension or bombast, even though it aspires to -- and achieves -- the stature of a classic Western.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Here is a Western without irony or innovation, without any of the overt efforts toward “revisionism” we’ve come to expect even from Eastwood -- a movie that waxes elegiac about the end of the West, but remains sure that cowboys and cattle and ramshackle frontier towns will live on in perpetuity at the cinema.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Costner sets course for one of the most stirringly choreographed shootouts in movie history.

Variety Todd McCarthy

An intensely scenic, refreshingly humanistic oater that dares to be sincere and open-hearted.

Empire Alan Morrison

A return to the Western in its pure, cinematic form.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Nobody smells of sagebrush, campfire coffee, tobacco (smoked or chewed) and saddle soap like Duvall.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

There's nothing corny, however, about the climactic shoot-out, which Costner has staged superbly as an extended logistical mini-war that surges and rifle-cracks with bloody abandon through what feels like every building in town. Call it dances with guns.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a great two-hour motion picture. Unfortunately, it runs 20 minutes longer than that.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Open Range could easily have lost 20 minutes in the editing room, but its very casual pacing and beautiful vistas - gorgeously photographed in British Columbia by James Munro - are a soothing alternative in a season of movies seemingly aimed at sufferers of attention deficit disorder.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

A flawed but highly entertaining B Western blown up to John Ford scale.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A patient, suspenseful exercise in genre craftsmanship

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

In spite of its portentousness, the film does engage one.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Mostly it's just a good yarn, with attractive picture-postcard vistas and an agreeable strain of light humor.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Costner is always at his best when he’s a little ornery, and Duvall is the same way. His grizzled performance is so thoroughly in character that he even chews as if it were 1882.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

The scenario recalls everything from "High Noon" to "Unforgiven," but Costner is less interested in grappling with the grim ambiguities underlying those films than in codifying them. There's still much to like, including the warm, thoughtful performances and cinematographer James Muro's fearless use of natural light.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

When the picture's good, it's really something; when it's bad, you grit your teeth and pray it will end.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Though visually lovely and ambitious, never soars to the heights achieved by "Unforgiven." Costner’s film lacks the moral complexity that might earn it a solid berth in the canon of the American Western.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The screenplay of Open Range, credited to one Craig Storper, is an awesome compendium of cowboy-movie cliches. It borders on parody, and often crosses the border, rustling up a drove of oater aphorisms.

USA Today Mike Clark

Compared with other films Costner has directed, Range isn't a folly like "The Postman," nor is it quite as over-elaborated as "Dances With Wolves."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A better, and more relevant movie, might have left us at the point of troubled introspection, but Costner is compulsive about tying up loose ends and upbeat messages. If the climax of Open Range is disappointing, the ending is almost intolerable.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A blend of the classical and the trite, the beautiful and tawdry, the genuinely moving and the cornball. Oddly, producer-director-star Costner often can't seem to tell the difference.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Many sequences, many moments, are turned skillfully, and the look of the film is much of the time breathtaking. Yet, for its entire two hours and fifteen minutes, we merely watch it. It is there. We are here, regrettably objective.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

While Costner the actor clearly imagines himself the Gary Cooper of the 21st century, he's got a crude sentimental streak that Costner the director fails to curtail.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Storper is pretty good at playing with and against certain western cliches in his treatment of the good guys (including Annette Bening's character), but resorts to pure cliche when it comes to the villians (e.g., Gambon and James Russo).

Premiere Addison MacDonald

A moderate success, if a bit clunky. Somewhere beneath the syrupy melodrama and the scenes that should have expired long ago, there is an intelligent, thoughtful western in waiting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Open Range veers wildly. It's a movie of beauty and sensitivity, and tedium and absurdity.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

In all, the film is a striking, if flawed, achievement by a talented actor who may become an important director if he sticks to the genre that suits him best.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Open Range copies the rain and flood of the Clint Eastwood classic but can't match it for dark-night-of-the-soul brilliance.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

There's a fine little western lurking inside Open Range: Too bad it gets drowned out by director Kevin Costner's pretentiousness. Almost everything in the movie feels inflated, overblown, drawn out.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Costner's relentless, root-canal humorlessness turns what might have been an enjoyable B-picture throwback into a ponderous drag.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Where "Silverado" swaggered, Open Range sulks; it's no fun at all.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Without Duvall, this movie would be as wet as Waterworld.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Pat C. gave it a3:
Two-thirds of the way through this movie was working. It really was. Then Costner was turned loose with his Aw-Shucks-I'm-just-a-gentle-caring-man-in-a-world-of-sexual-predators act. He's also a vicious killer with a conscience. Yea right. Like the stereotypes he guns down deserve a second thought. Duvall & Bening tried, but Costner's Dances-With-Dorks character is increasingly more than I can stand. This is a parody of Unforgiven pretending to merit being taken seriously. Oh Kevin Kevin, what to do with you?

Luke D. gave it a1:
a very bad, bad film with characters so underdeveloped that i almost wished them harm. the first film i have ever walked out of.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Captures osme of the western spirit, but spends way, way too much time moping around, waiting for certain death.

Roni G. gave it a10:
Very natural. nice natural scenes! The story, the actors performance are very good! Music Too!

R. F. gave it a10:
All in all, a really great Western. Just a real fun movie. Excellent, believable dialogue by all three main characters.

William S. gave it a 9:
Anyone who gives this movie less than an 8, is proof of the comment by R.A. Heinlien that "Being non-productive themselves, ctitics can hate all productive people equally."

Richard E. gave it a 9:
Ben K, apart from the fact that you've given away a suprise in the movie from your first sentence, you do not have the right to slag off other people's enthusiasms for a movie just because you didn't like it. The movie is very naturalistic, and embraces the feel of classic westerns while taking care not to decend into cliché. Costner and Duvall make a great pairing and play off each other very well and are ably supported by Bening and Gambon (though he's not given as much screen time as I always want him too). One of the best cinema shootouts in film history too (though there are shades of Unforgiven throughout the second half of the film, albeit not a bad film to grab themes from). It's a slow-burner of a film but one which is ultimately more rewarding than other fast-moving westerns.

Open Range Buena Vista Pictures

Open Range
Buena Vista Pictures