Open Range: Critic Reviews

Costner shows an exacting instinct for how to build a shoot-'em-up from the ground up.

A ponderous drag.

Open Range has too much of what its title portends.

The year's first serious contender for big prizes.

A fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.

A patient, suspenseful exercise in genre craftsmanship.

Charley's crusty assessment of events -- 'Nothing that's been happening in this town is much of a surprise' -- is all too knowingly accurate.

A flawed but highly entertaining B Western blown up to John Ford scale.

A great and beautiful Western in the classic vein.

Open Range resembles a graduation ceremonies address. It's long, a tad pompous and sprinkled with occasional kernels of truth.

The first two hours of Open Range are a great pleasure, and the final minutes come as a vague indigestion.

An imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western.

A strange mix of the grand and the hackneyed that it never really gets its bearings -- even though, at its best, it reminds us how grand, impure and potentially alive the Western genre can be.

An awesome compendium of cowboy-movie cliches. It borders on parody, and often crosses the border, rustling up a drove of oater aphorisms.

Costner is not the most exuberant actor, but, for the most part, that's an asset here.

A harmless but singularly unremarkable oater that takes a long time to reach the Big Shootout.

A juicy, character-driven western with a real plot that spins a hypnotic narrative.

A solidly crafted and entertaining old-school western.

Open Range is too talky, too corny and too long. Yet it gets so much right, from its simple affection for the sight of horses at full gallop to a climactic gunfight that sets a new standard for wit and excitement and right- eous revenge.

A movie that seeks no higher calling than to entertain us the way Hollywood used to.

If the climax of Open Range is disappointing, the ending is almost intolerable, as the plot descends into a twinkling love story, and Costner reverts to filmmaking aimed at 12-year-olds.

This is a great two-hour motion picture. Unfortunately, it runs 20 minutes longer than that.