Louder than words

Open Range is a big, old-fashioned western that talks about justice and virtue and is full of a longing for the imagined simplicities of America's past. There are women in wooden kitchens and men in saloons and a thrilling shoot-out that goes on for an age. It is a film that sticks closely to established movie images and myths, and is all so familiar that it feels like a sweet recurring dream.

Charley Waite (Kevin Costner) and Boss Spearman ( Robert Duvall) are freerangers in 1880, cowboys who graze their cattle across the country, following the good weather, living rough on the prairies. One day, somewhere in Montana, they are attacked by a gang of rustlers and ride to the nearest town for help. Tough times lie ahead.

In Harmonville, where the rest of the film is set, they must face Michael Gambon's Irish immigrant rancher, a man with no moral sense whatsoever. He musters few words to say what's on his mind, but then nobody talks much in Open Range. "Some things gnaw at a man worse than dying," Duvall says, enigmatically, referring presumably to a life without honour or heroes. Costner nods. A film, then, about quiet men in suede vests.

This is an ambitious project for Costner (star, director, producer), still stinging as he must have been, from the expensive flops Waterworld, and The Postman. But he was wise to cast himself as Mr Waite, a cowboy of few words - it is a character he is good at.

Here is Costner, calm and careful, his skin these days only a little older with its new indentations and fine markings. And when he is like this on screen, he is perfect; he lets all the action come to him, never making a fuss or being particularly inspirational, simply holding himself very still to be watched. Just like for Dances With Wolves, he puts in a cannily dour performance.

Towards the end of Open Range, when the bullets start whistling down Main Street right past Costner's head, he speaks to Duvall in a flat, unimpressed voice, as though he is reading from a newspaper.

And it is precisely what you want to hear in a western: a gentle, unremarkable voice providing the counterpoint to the big score, the big scenery, the villains-against-goodfolk story, the spurs, Gambon's twitching dewlaps. Costner's very ordinariness is his great talent.

Open Range
Cert: cert12A