Open Range

Kevin Costner has brought the Western back to the movie theater, and film critics, who have not been especially kind to Costner in recent years, appear to be leaning over backward to find nice things to say about Open Range. A.O. Scott in the New York Times, for example, describes the goodness of the leading characters, then remarks: With so much virtue on display and talked about so earnestly, you might think that Open Range ... would be a good movie. It isn't. But, to be fair, it is not altogether terrible: Mr. Costner, who directed and co-produced in addition to starring, has studied the great old westerns closely, and his reverence pays off. The main problem, says Scott, is Costner's relentless, root-canal humorlessness. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times pays Costner this left-handed compliment: Scoff if you have to (and you will definitely have to), but in the final analysis Kevin Knows Westerns. Indeed, Eric Harrison asks in his review in the Houston Chronicle: Who would've thought Kevin Costner had it in him? Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls the movie imperfect but deeply involving and suggests that it is made even memorable by Robert Duvall's performance. His character elevates Open Range from a good cowboy story into the archetypal region where the best Westerns exist, Ebert writes. Steven Hunter in the Washington Post leads off his review in John Wayne style: Listen here, pilgrims. Kevin Costner's Open Range talks too much talk, but it walks enough walk. And it's got great hats. So it's a pleasure to report, minor caveats aside, that it's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou. Indeed, it has been so long since Westerns were fashionable that Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer refers to Open Range as a wondrously odd time warp of a western. Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail likes the first half of the movie but loathes the second, and in a direct jab at Costner, who demands -- and receives -- completely control over his films, Lacey writes about the ending that it makes him wish a studio could step in [and] take the film away from a director. But Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal calls the film one of the year's triumphs and concludes that Open Range amounts to a professional rebirth for Kevin Costner, whose career has been marked by a string of commercial and artistic failures. He's back with his gifts intact.