Open Range - - - - This movie differs from any one of the 430 episodes of Bonanza in the following ways: The movie has one scene with a little bit of outdoor action during a rainstorm. This might be too much trouble for a low-budget television show to shoot. They would probably just have the characters come inside wet and establish what had happened outside through exposition. Instead of being fifty minutes long without commercials, the movie is one hundred and forty-five minutes long without extra content. Do the math and you see that for every minute of the movie with a Bonanza level of action, there must be two more minutes where nothing happens, or the same thing continues to happen. Early on, Open Range hints at being a gritty-realism Western in the mold of Unforgiven. "The reality of the Wild West was that it rained a lot and you were lucky to huddle under a tent. And it was cold and hard and boring. And it took a long, long time for anything to happen." But any sense of realism built up by the rain and lack of things happening is later cast aside in favor of every ridiculous cinematic convention. Cardboard villains. Cardboard villagers. Inexplicable love at first sight between the dirty cowpuncher and the only woman in town. Miraculous inability of villains to shoot heroes at point blank range. Cheap pet tricks: You killed my dog! You saved my dog! There's a kind of weird coffee thing early on. "Let's go into town for some sugar and coffee." "Here ya go Mose, some coffee... made fresh for once!" "Since you saved my dog, I'd be honored if you'd join me in this saloon, for a cup of coffee." Was this movie paid for by Nescafe? (There's also a plug for Swiss chocolate.) Or is it just that the screenplay was written in a Starbucks?

Richard Mason

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