Jan 08 2009
Westerns
I just watched “Open Range.” Those datburned free grazers done come in and encroached on ranchers’ lands. Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall blow the whole town to smithereens with the help of the local blacksmith high on a Cuban cigar.
I never have liked westerns much. I am a Texan. I love my state near ’bouts much as any true born ‘n bred native, but, I tell ‘ya, western movies are awful. This one had to of been set in Colorado, what with the mountains and all in the background. It was even better than watching the scenery in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” which I have to admit, I watched religiously every Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. Then Chuck Norris came on after that, so I had my western education dose every week.
Despite the scenery in “Open Range,” the movie is awful. The acting is bad. The moral lessons it tries to teach about the difference between justice and revenge (which still ends up in people dead all over the place in the mud) and the difference between killin’ and murder (which Costner admits is like “splitting hairs,” really end up only confusing me. It’s hard to see where the line is between Duvall’s character, Boss “Bluebonnet” Spearman, who usually stops short of killing a wounded man, but who has no problem shooting him in the first place, and Costner’s character, Charley White, who wants to kill anything that moves just about (but who hates himself for being that way).
That was about as deep as I wanted to get with trying to undestand the complexities of the old cow pokes. Boss is an old cantankerous feller who wants to raise up Button, who he took on as an orphan to employ, and White just needs to chill out. There’s layers in their characters that I could detect, but the acting was just too bad to make me really care enough to try very hard.
