Vinne

This is a great early film by director Wolfgang Petersen and in my opinion, it is the closest Germany ever got to the "New Hollywood Style" of that time. The atmosphere of the West-Berlin locations are captured perfectly in this raw and intelligent thriller, and the city looks different as in any other film it has been shown. Many of the actors and crew members were at the very beginning of their careers when they starred in this picture, especially the young Jürgen Prochnow and Otto Sanders give great performances. Too bad it's not available on DVD, it's definitely one of those films that aged very well and should get a proper anniversary release. 9/10

I liked this movie. The actors are great, even if Kevin doesn't seem as dangerous as he says he is, but then again: he has be living peacefully in the last ten years. There's a lot of fine humor in the dialogue and I like the way it sounds.

There's nothing wrong with the pacing of this film, I wouldn't even call it slow. If you consider "Once Upon A Time In The West" a slow movie, this one is pretty fast in comparison. The film and its story have their own rhythm and the editing does a very good job trying to go along with that. There are a little too many dissolves in the first 30 minutes of the film, trying to actually speed up the narration but after that the film finds just its perfect pace. The shoot-out is especially well edited with great sound effects. I guess most of the CGI work was done with the sky, painting heavy dark clouds everywhere that look a little suspicious and some shots of the white dog in the beginning look a little bit too much like calendar photos that certain people would have hanging in their kitchen. Apart from that, the film looks great, not cliché and Kevin Costner even makes an effort not to look too well-groomed all the time. His hair for example is messed up in many of the scenes, something that would never have happened in DANCES WITH WOLVES (where he always looked like he just stepped out of a shampoo commercial).

The ending is a little weak and you can tell that the film doesn't really know where it wants to go, so Kevin made it go where he thought most people would have wanted to see it go. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the ending spoils the entire movie but it could have been different, no doubt.

As far as the directing is concerned, I think this film is actually more grown-up as DANCES WITH WOLVES (even if it's not the better film). There were a lot of goofy, silly scenes in that picture (the army general or whatever, peeing in his pants, the farting farmer etc) that clashed with the serious tone of the movie. There are no real jokes in OPEN RANGE, no one-liners that have the entire audience burst into laughter but instead there's fine humor spread out in many of the serious, sometimes even sinister conversations. (These conversations are beautifully written in my opinion, including the one in which the Duvall-character calls god a certain kind of son - I just can't understand why another imdb-user was so outraged about this in an earlier critique.)

And finally to those who think Costner shouldn't have played the lead role in this film because he can't act: the lead is Robert Duvall and the character he portrays is of course far more complicated as the one Kevin chose to play. That Charlie-character is just right for Kevin's abilities, just like the Terminator is just right for Schwarzenegger. And it's great to cast someone as the female love interest who's over 40, not even the great Eastwood dared to do that in Unforgiven. So please, no complaining about the casting. And also no complaining about the speed of the film, this film would have been ridiculous if it had been edited in a KILL BILL-kind of way. There's the right pace for every film and the art is to find that pace. There are many examples for films that didn't get the pace right, this one did.

Two guys at a movie theater get into a fight over which movie it is they are currently watching: artsy-fartsy "Fear Eats The Soul" or big-bucks-blockbuster "Alien V" and about 10 minutes later, their lives will be changed for ever. You've got to see this, if you like the movies, you'll like this one. Very well made, too.