It's a gorgeously atmospheric, perfectly cast, beautifully crafted oater of the old school, made with heaps of integrity, no gimmicks and few concessions to the box office. Its only real flaw is that it strains a bit too hard to be a "classic" western.

Open Range gets better the deeper you get into the story.

In this handsomely traditional movie, Kevin Costner has tried to fix the Western myth for all time in the stern contours of Duvall’s face and the guttural beauty of his voice. [1 September 2003, p. 130]

There's a lot in this movie, simple, big, small and exciting. It's the year's first serious contender for big prizes. What's not to like about this picture?

An imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western.

Say what you like, think what you will, scoff if you have to (and you will definitely have to), but in the final analysis Kevin Knows Westerns.

It's a real and rare pleasure to see Costner and Duvall together -- these masters of intense passivity, who know how to be watched when they're listening.

It's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.

A fine, heartfelt film, sometimes harrowing in its violence but blessedly free of pretension or bombast, even though it aspires to -- and achieves -- the stature of a classic Western.

Here is a Western without irony or innovation, without any of the overt efforts toward “revisionism” we’ve come to expect even from Eastwood -- a movie that waxes elegiac about the end of the West, but remains sure that cowboys and cattle and ramshackle frontier towns will live on in perpetuity at the cinema.

Costner sets course for one of the most stirringly choreographed shootouts in movie history.

An intensely scenic, refreshingly humanistic oater that dares to be sincere and open-hearted.

A return to the Western in its pure, cinematic form.

Nobody smells of sagebrush, campfire coffee, tobacco (smoked or chewed) and saddle soap like Duvall.