Review of Open Range (2003) by Stephen S — 18 Jun 2011

I'm generally not a fan of westerns that don't involve Clint Eastwood, but Open Range is really cool, and has something for everyone. Fans of westerns will most likely enjoy it because...well, it's a western.

Action fans will enjoy the high-octane gunfights in the second half of the film, and drama fans will have a field day, because this is practically a western-drama. Hell, even viewers who have a focus on cinematography will enjoy the atmosphere that Costner creates as director.

He's good at setting the western mood with beautiful panoramic shots and swelling music, if that's your thing, but he does a good job at setting up gritty scenes as well. My only major issue with this film is its length.

..now this isn't too long of a film, but there's a lot of unnecessary stuff here that doesn't really contribute to the story or plot/character development...and some of these scenes can seriously drag on; add this to the sometimes overt lack of necessity for this scenes, and you end up with transition scenes that are pretty easy to spot.

This is a typical mistake for rookie directors, especially actor-directors like Costner. I remember seeing some of Sean Penn's first directorial films, where there were noticeable amounts of unnecessary scenes, and the other "kiss of death" for rookie directors, too many transition shots.

In Penn's case (for one particular film I saw called The Pledge), there were way too many shots of birds and rivers and whatnot in between scenes...Penn must have used shots like these over a dozen separate times.

At least in Penn's case, however, these shots only lasted a few seconds...Costner's are less frequent, but some of them last uncomfortably long. Combine this with the fact that Open Range is already pushing viewers' patience with the typical slow progression most westerns possess, and with its 2-plus hours, and this can get pretty annoying.

This is a shame, because many of these transitions are beautiful panoramic scenes...it's just that they go on for too long, and sometimes give the impression that some dialogue scenes were set up just so Costner can get some good background scenery into frame.

Again, this wouldn't be a problem, except he does it so damn much. Thankfully for Costner, he can pull this off because it's a western, and westerns are frequently slow paced, with a gradual buildup to a climax.

..in other genres, Costner's style of directing cause a serious problem.