So I saw Open Range the other night. Justin has been pestering me (in a good way, of course) to see this, and although it’s a movie I’m likely to see and enjoy, it’s not the type of movie I ever look forward to. The trailer just makes it look like a boringly earnest, humorless epic. And although those are qualities the film possesses in small degree, I dug it overall. Orson Scott Card’s review is pretty much spot-on, although I definitely don’t share his disdain (hatred, even) for films with a more ambiguous moral grounding. (Card’s take on American Beauty is one of the most astonishing, though mercifully brief, misreadings I’ve ever seen.)
Early on, I felt like smacking Kevin Costner whenever he opened his mouth. I decided that since I was digging pretty much everything else, I’d stop letting it bother me. So, about 10 minutes into the film, I stopped letting it bother me. The annoying music was much harder to ignore. As were some hackneyed moments toward the end, particularly in the Final Showdown (a common fault of Final Showdowns, really), where the bad guy is revealed to be not just a guy operating with a conflicting moral compass, but a Really Very Evil guy.
Oh well
