I checked out Kevin Costner's new flick "Open Range" yesterday, and was impressed with it. Though story-wise it has nothing new to offer (being a fairly typical showdown-style Western), the appeal of films like this is usually in the characterizations, and Robert Duvall and Costner bring a lot to the table in that department.

Duvall makes me happy whenever he pops up on a movie screen, and though it's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion of a hairline on the aging Costner, I'm glad to see him back in top form again. The characters are affecting without the movie ever lapsing into sentimentality, and the film is beautifully, breathtakingly photographed. The fact that they shot footage like this on something like a $20 million budget makes me wonder what all the $40-$50 million movies are wasting their money on. That must be some mighty fine on-set catering.

It's not perfect by any stretch (with an ending that is probably too pat for the tone of the rest of the movie, and one stunning blasphemy early in the film that virtually negated the entire thing for me), but I found "Open Range" overall to be a satisfying, black hats vs. white hats, old-fashioned Western, featuring two of the more likeable actors of this generation. Costner (who directed) mercifully eschews the recent moral ambiguity so vogue in recent anti-hero westerns, and instead returns to the clear good guys/bad guys formula that established the genre as a classic in the first place.

Oh yeah, and I wouldn't be at all shocked to see Duvall get a best actor Oscar nomination for it.