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OPEN RANGE by Tom McCurrie
Westerns haven't done particularly well in recent years. Some say it's because Urban America has lost touch with its Manifest Destiny roots. But I think it's because most of these new oaters have been poorly executed. A lame movie is a lame movie, no matter what the genre.
But Kevin Costner is trying to change all that. And if anyone can, it's Mr. DANCES WITH WOLVES. Unfortunately, his latest opus, OPEN RANGE, proves that the Western isn't dying because it's a weak genre, it's dying because it's being saddled (no pun intended) with weak scripts.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Written by Craig Storper from a novel by Lauran Paine, OPEN RANGE does have much to recommend. Most prominently, an excellent, Oscar-worthy performance by Robert Duvall as the cantankerous yet tender-hearted Boss. It also has some terrific character bits, like Costner and Duvall revealing their real names to each other before the climactic gunfight. Moments like these flesh out our protagonists, allowing us to bond with them in an uncommon way. In a cinematic environment where character is routinely sacrificed for special effects, Costner should be hailed for making a film where people take center stage.
The highlight of the movie is the climactic gunfight between the "free-grazers" (Costner and Duvall) and the bad guys (led by Michael Gambon's town boss). This twenty-minute sequence is simply outstanding, choreographed for maximum impact and excitement. Again, kudos to Costner for filming this gunplay in a classical, easy-to-follow style.
So where does OPEN RANGE shoot blanks? With the plot, which is too thin to last 138 minutes: two guys go for payback against the rancher who did them wrong (he killed one friend and wounded another). Now all this is set up by the First Act Break. So what happens then? Our two heroes simply wait around town for Gambon to show up. This wouldn't be a problem but he doesn't show up till the Third Act! Until then, zilch in the plot department. OK, OK, we do get a romance between Costner and Annette Bening, but it's so tentative and underplayed it hardly seems worth the trouble. Minus that, you literally have no story in the Second Act, and that gets mighty boring mighty quick.
The passive protagonists are another problem. They don't go after the villain, but wait for the heavy to come to them. SHANE's Alan Ladd never did that. If he wanted a showdown, he'd ride over to the bad guy and kick his butt. We prefer to see our heroes active, taking the fight to the enemy. Anything else diminishes them in our eyes.
Let's take a look at UNFORGIVEN, a very similar script, and not just because Costner's character is a reformed killer. Like OPEN RANGE, UNFORGIVEN has cowboys battling the town boss (Gene Hackman's sheriff). But Clint's movie works because it has a second plot: three killers tracking down the slime that slashed a prostitute. This plot fills the First and Second Acts quite nicely, leaving the Third for the face-off with Hackman. OPEN RANGE just has the face-off, which isn't enough story to sustain a feature. And because Clint and his buddies are tracking down varmints the whole Second Act, they come off way more active than the guys in Costner's movie.
Of course, you could say Costner is simply following the lead of HIGH NOON. Gary Cooper waited for villains the whole Second Act, too. But Cooper actively tries to raise deputies, while Costner and Duvall simply mark time before Gambon arrives (saving a puppy, blasting a barroom mirror, etc.). HIGH NOON generates more suspense as well. Cooper searches for deputies because he can't fight the Miller Gang alone. The more people turn him down, the more we worry about his fate. Gambon has a gang, too (even larger than Frank Miller's), but Costner and Duvall seem blithely unconcerned, not attempting to get any help whatsoever. If our heroes don't worry, why should we?
OPEN RANGE also fails at escalating tension. SHANE is a masterwork in this regard. In fact, the entire film is one long rise in tension, and that's a good thing, for with rising tension comes rising interest. The cattlemen go from verbal threats to using fists to killing livestock to killing people to get the homesteaders to skedaddle. The genius of the script is that every time the homesteaders thwart bad guy Ryker (Emile Meyer), he raises the stakes till it's do or die. This ends the picture on a high note. The problem with OPEN RANGE is that it escalates to do or die too quickly, by the First Act Break. Once it hits that high note, there's nowhere to go but down. And since we still have two-thirds of the movie to go, it goes down pretty far.
Handcuffing the film further are the underwritten villains. Gambon is evil for evil's sake; his hatred of free-grazers is totally unmotivated. In SHANE, the Ryker character has plenty of motivation. He and his rancher buddies spilled their blood civilizing the Valley from the Indians. Now the "sodbusters" want to walk in and take their grazing land away without so much as a thank you. Fleshing out good and bad characters gives SHANE an almost tragic dimension, something Costner's film lacks.
Finally, OPEN RANGE fails to follow the cardinal rule of screenwriting: show, don't tell. For instance, we don't see Gambon's character lord it over the town, only hear of it. As a result, the armed uprising at the end seems to come out of nowhere. We need to see these people pushed to the edge for this to make any sense; they're putting their lives on the line, after all. The same goes for hired gun Butler (Kim Coates), a supposed menace with a Colt. Since we don't see him kill anyone, he doesn't seem like much of a threat (especially with a broken arm). As a result, there's no suspense over Costner's fate. Compare this to SHANE, where we see Wilson (Jack Palance) waste someone with a lightning-fast draw. We worry if Shane can beat this guy, and this ups the tension considerably.
If the Western is to survive and grow, it'll definitely need stronger scripts than OPEN RANGE. If it doesn't get them, the genre might ride off into the sunset and never come back.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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