Kevin Costner can take his dancing shoes out of the closet.
With his shot-in-Alberta western, Open Range, Costner returns to his Dances With Wolves glory days, giving him ample reason to kick up his dusty boot heels.
In 1991, with Dances With Wolves, Costner nabbed Oscars for producing and directing and narrowly missed a third for his performance as a former army man who finds new hope and restored passion through his friendship with a Sioux tribe.
Costner followed this triumph with Waterworld and The Postman, two exercises in excess that substituted hollow bravado for storytelling.
He's learned his lesson and with Open Range, opening in town today, he crafts the best duster since Clint Eastwood's 1992 triumph Unforgiven, which was also shot in Alberta.
Once again the magnificent local vistas are essential to the storytelling.
The conflict in Open Range arises when Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) brings his free-ranging herd into a valley overtaken by cattle baron Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon).
Both men lay claim to this spectacular, essentially untouched utopia. When Baxter sends his hired thugs to wreck havoc on Spearman's camp, he invites retaliation.
In every classic western, that means a showdown and, in the case of Open Range, it's a bloodbath.
Like such westerns as Shane, High Noon, The Searchers and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral so beautifully contend, land, ideals and friendships are worth dying for.
Costner and his screenwriter Craig Storper make this point, once again especially when it comes to friendships.
Spearman's hired hands include Charley Waite (Costner), a former mercenary and gunfighter; Mose (Abraham Benrubi), a giant of a man with the soul of a child, and Button (Diego Luna), an orphan who considers the three older men his family.
Some of the film's best scenes record Mose's love for Spearman's old dog and the playful wrestling of Mose and Button. It's because Costner spends so much time establishing these relationships that he creates such tension when they are threatened.
The same is true of the instant attraction Charley feels for Sue Barlow (Annette Bening), who nurses their wounds and makes them long for the stability they abandoned long ago. Bening plays Sue as a woman whose inner beauty radiates through her plain exterior and the fact she is almost the same age as Costner makes this a most credible and satisfying romance.
This is Costner's finest performance since Wyatt Earp, where he showed similar understatement and nuance.
Costner understands this is clearly Spearman's movie and Duvall rises to the challenge, giving Open Range moments of deep pathos and gentle humour. Granted, this is a performance similar to the one he gave in the Lonesome Dove TV series, but it works just as well here as it did in that show's first incarnation.
In his final performance, the great character actor Michael Jeter soars as one of the most beloved western cliches, the town eccentric who is the first to support the strangers.
Gambon is more a symbol of evil than he is a true character, but that's because there is so little information about his background or his motives.
James Munro's cinematography and Michael J. Duthie and Miklos Wright's editing give Open Range moments of grandeur and moments of sublime intimacy.
Open Range has an extended anticlimax but, to Costner's credit, both as a director and actor, it is not anticlimatic. He makes us care enough about these people to want to know what happens to them after the dust of the gunfight settles.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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