Escape to the movies with one of our Movie Review Friday selections. Each week we review a film with an environmental theme that's currently in theaters or available on DVD. Seen a good eco-flick lately? Send us a short review and look for it in the next Movie Review Friday.
Open Range is a true Western, with all the requisite gunfights and romance. But its exceptional dialogue and the superior acting of Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner push this film beyond your typical rodeo. Its scenic setting, representing 1880s Montana, is beautiful. And the prevailing theme reminds us that before barbed wire came along, the frontier was a vast landscape with no borders.
The story follows two free-range cattle ranchers and their encounter with a violent land baron who has a particular dislike for their type. This was an era defined by looming questions over land rights; land-grabbers and free-rangers were on opposite sides of the issue.
"Cows is one thing," says Duvall's character, Boss. "But one man telling another man where he can go in this country is something else."
Once barbed wire began lacing the landscape, the old, romanticized traditions of open herding along America's frontier became endangered. Violent, small-scale skirmishes, including the Johnson County Range War , erupted throughout the American West, grabbing headlines.
Though it's got suspenseful violence, Open Range isn't one of those routine, action-packed Westerns. The characters are more reflective, less Hollywood. They struggle with flash floods and the trauma of the Civil War. And it's refreshing to watch a Western that's not dumbed-down or filled with stunt doubles.
Escape to the movies with one of our Movie Review Friday selections. Each week we review a film with an environmental theme that's currently in theaters or available on DVD. Seen a good eco-flick lately? Send us a short review and look for it in the next Movie Review Friday.
Open Range (2003)
Available on DVD
Open Range is a true Western, with all the requisite gunfights and romance. But its exceptional dialogue and the superior acting of Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner push this film beyond your typical rodeo. Its scenic setting, representing 1880s Montana, is beautiful. And the prevailing theme reminds us that before barbed wire came along, the frontier was a vast landscape with no borders.
The story follows two free-range cattle ranchers and their encounter with a violent land baron who has a particular dislike for their type. This was an era defined by looming questions over land rights; land-grabbers and free-rangers were on opposite sides of the issue.
"Cows is one thing," says Duvall's character, Boss. "But one man telling another man where he can go in this country is something else."
Once barbed wire began lacing the landscape, the old, romanticized traditions of open herding along America's frontier became endangered. Violent, small-scale skirmishes, including the Johnson County Range War , erupted throughout the American West, grabbing headlines.
Though it's got suspenseful violence, Open Range isn't one of those routine, action-packed Westerns. The characters are more reflective, less Hollywood. They struggle with flash floods and the trauma of the Civil War. And it's refreshing to watch a Western that's not dumbed-down or filled with stunt doubles.
--Brian Foley