Open Range
(hit stop to stop annoying music)
Saddle em up, pardners! We're gonna go-a ridin'. Off to nowhere! For no good
reason! C'mon get yer gear! Hop to! Mr. Kevin is a-callin'!.... Whuts that?
Whatsamattah? You don't wanna go a ridin' with Mr. Kevin? You say you've
been burnt one too many times before? Naw! This here is Mr. Kevin! He won't steer us
wrong! He done danced with wolves, 'member? This time he's gonna keep it real simple-like. No worlds of water. No mad
max postal employee. He ain't even bringin a baseball bat nor one of them fancy
golf sticks he trots around every five years. It's just gonna be Mr. Kevin and his
posse and his horses and his dawg. Doin it old school western and like he's....Whut!? You ain't you up
for it? Doesn't sound good to you?... Well yer ears are workin better than mine
because yer hearing it loud and clear. If yer ears are saying 'no go' they's a
shootin ya straight..... Cause this here movie is a no-go no how..
I knew I was gonna see a movie this weekend. It was gonna be Jason vs' Freddy or this. But I didn't want to go it alone to the J vs' F. So it was Open Range. Water and M&M's. Feet up. Two hour+ Western. Uch. I've tried to watch westerns in the past. I think they're ok. But they never jazzed me up. Good, Bad and Ugly is good. The rest of em sort of just blend. Except for Shane. Shane seemed wacked- so it stood out. But there is one western that I love. Unforgiven. Unforgiven was everything I thought a western should be without all the extras. Cut to the bone. It rules. I dig that flick. Open Range is more like all the things I don't like about westerns. Corny characters and plots. Bad guys who didn't do bad good. Clean cut and dry. And worst of all. Boring. I like the world of westerns. I just don't seem to like most westerns.
Let's talk about Mr. Kevin. He's one of those guys that always plays the same guy. Just stuffed into a new outfit with different facial hair. But the tone is the same. And in most cases the character is the same. And I'm not crazy about that character. Too mild mannered and monotone. Always the hero. Dances With Wolves was good when it came out but I never thought it was a classic. And I noticed on a recent viewing... it hasn't aged well. As for his other directorial outings...I always half-like em. I half-liked Waterworld and half-liked Postman. But when you're talking looonnng. 'Half-like' just don't cut the cheese.
And Open Range I half-liked too...maybe less than half. Seriously, within the first 15 minutes I had a strong urge to walk out on this flick. My seat was uncomfortable and the movie started off horribly. Big loud music and bad dialogue. If they weren't outside I would swear the thing was a bad broadway play. Even the font of the credits bothered me. But it started to kick in a little and I bit the bullet and stuck with it. Mr. Kevin and Robert Duvall are 'free rangers' who like raise cattle on the 'free land of america' and some rich townie dickface doesn't like them and has a personal grudge against free rangers for no reason... literally. And he flexes his muscles and off goes the whole thing. But the whole thing never goes off or turns on. It just sort of lazes around all over the screen going thru the westerny motions. My butt bone hurt throughout which is always a bad sign for how much I'm liking a movie. It was soo mild and boring. There's no other way to describe it.... except for maybe semisucky...corny.... yawny... disney... uchey... and definitely.... whatevery.
Three Good Things About This Movie
- The gunfight toward the end was seriously good. The sound of the gunshots were
crisp and loud and the action had a good sense of clumsy realism.
- Lots of pretty horses and cute dogs. And it the movie looked nice.
- Robert Duvall carried this movie on his back. He's great. Every time he walked
on screen, I looked at him like...now that dude knows his schmamiggle!
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- The bad guys were all lame and to the point where you couldn't even get
psyched when they got shot dead.
- The music was distractingly bad. All big and stringy. And came in at weird
points.
- The plot had no twists and there were no boomy moments. It was straight up
right out of the formula. Hokey cowpokey.
I'm a-thinkin this is a vidyo rental or jes wait for the new fangled cable tv thing. I reckon yer gonna wanna watch this one in pieces instead of straight thru. Cause straight thru is a long haul and half way there you'll wanna shoot your horse and bury yourself in the sand. As for Mr. Kevin we at the ranch all respect that cowpoke for thinking big- time and time again. Only problem bein' it seems that Mr. Kevin needs to get himself a good pair of them spectacles... cause he just caint see big the way big needs to be seen.