![]() ![]() The local cattle rancher Baxter (Michael Gambon) wants the free grazers off his land and warns Charley and Boss when they retrieve Mose that they have until the next day to be out of the area. ![]() Mose is attacked and thrown in jail during a visit to a town. ![]() As the film opens in the 1880s, the pair and their employees - the beefy, rugged, likable Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and the impetuous Mexican teenager Buttons (Diego Luna) - are driving cattle across the West. He and Charley Waite (Costner) have been partners for ten years. Robert Duvall stars as Boss Spearman, a rugged old-timer who free-grazes cattle. Sue: “It appears that’s not very healthy.”Ĭharlie: “You may not know this, but there are things that gnaw on a man worse than dying.”Ĭharlie: “I’m trying to put some hard things behind me, but they don’t always stay put.”īoss Spearman: “It’s a pretty day for settin’ things right.”īoss Spearman, before the gunfight: “Sounds like you got it all worked out.”Ĭharlie: “Yeh, cept the part where we don’t get killed.”īoss Spearman: “I ain’t wasting a good bullet to ease your pain, you son of a bitch.Kevin Costner stars in and directs the Western Open Range. And I’m gonna kill every son of a bitch that comes to take ’em.”Ĭharlie: “For one man in open ground, you sure got a lot of killin’ in mind.”Ĭharlie Wait: “Every once in a while, I almost get through a day without thinking about who I am and what I done.”īoss Spearman: “No, his name is Button and he works for me.” “How’s this going to work,” he asks of their relationship, “if you don’t do what I say?” She just smiles.ĭiego Luna as Button in Open Range (2003)Ĭharlie Waite: “You just gonna sit out here waitin’ with them cows?”īoss Spearman: “That’s right. That said, one of the film’s best line comes when Sue Barlow is slow to follow Charlie Waite’s order to get back to town. The whole thing seems forced, especially from the viewpoint of Annette Bening’s character.Įxactly what attracts her to this man who keeps showing up with badly beaten comrades, who seems tongue-tied around her, who seems haunted by his past and who is about to go into a gunfight he’s unlikely to survive? A few awkward glances, and they’re smitten with one another. If the film has a downfall, it’s the budding romance between Waite and Sue Barlow, the doctor’s sister. And if it starts off as two sides facing off in the middle of the street, the gunfight quickly turns into a chaotic game of cat and mouse among the buildings and alleys around town. Townsfolk flee to the hills to get out of range of what’s about to happen. Speaking of that showdown, it’s one of the best you’ll find in a Western. And Waite’s past is about to come in very handy during the showdown with Baxter and his band of henchmen. Both still have been working side by side for a decade, but still have their secrets. Well-done Western, particularly when the focus is on the relationship between Spearman and Waite. Robert Duvall as Boss Spearman in Open Range (2003) There’s a death to avenge and a principle to defend. That’s one reason Waite, a gunman with a reputation he’s not proud up, has stuck by his side for 10 years.īut Spearman isn’t about to step aside this time. Spearman’s always been a man who’s tried to sidestep trouble. That’s clearer when mysterious riders show up on the horizon, surveying the small herd.Īnd when Spearman and Waite ride off to break up that party, they return to camp to find Mose dead and Button severely wounded. It’s pretty clear he intends to make an example of Boss Spearman’s small outfit. ![]() They also have their first encounter with Sheriff Poole (James Russo) and with Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon), cattle king in these here parts, the man who runs Harmonville, a man who hates free-grazers. Spearman and Waite head to town to find out what happened and discover their friend in jail, badly beaten. Longtime partners Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and Charlie Waite (Kevin Costner) are driving their small cattle herd through open range with the help of two younger men - Mose and Button - when a severe storm forces them to halt near Harmonville. ![]()
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