Here’s where Kevin Costner’s underrated 2003 western Open Range was shot. Kevin Costner has a long history with the western genre, with his first breakout role being the 1985 ensemble Silverado with Kevin Kline and Scott Glenn. One of the highlights of Costner’s career was starring and directing Dances With Wolves, where he plays an army officer who joins an Indian tribe. The movie was pegged in the press as a vanity project that was destined to fail prior to release, but it was both a huge critical and commercial success. It also won Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards, controversially beating out Martin Scorcese gangster masterpiece Goodfellas.
Kevin Costner’s next western outing wasn’t so warmly received, however. He played the title role in 1994 biopic Wyatt Earp, covering the legendary lawman’s entire life. Despite a great cast, the film was an overlong, self-serious slog. It also came out after 1993’s Tombstone, another Earp western starring Kurt Russell. Ironically, Costner was originally signed on to Tombstone only to leave over creative differences with writer/director Kevin Jarre. When the film was being set up with Russell elsewhere, Costner reportedly used his then considerable clout to block financing avenues for it.
Kevin Costner’s last directorial effort to date is 2003’s Open Range, where he stars alongside Robert Duvall (The Godfather) as cattlemen who seek revenge on a land baron and a corrupt sheriff after they attack their crew. The movie was solid hit during release but despite rarely getting mentioned nowadays, it’s the kind of old-fashioned, handsomely mounted western that rarely gets made anymore.
Open Range also features some beautiful landscapes and scenery, but despite being set in Montana the film shot entirely in Canada. Key locations including the Stoney Indian Reservation in Alberta, alongside other locations like Morley and Longview; other westerns like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven or Tom Selleck’s Monte Walsh also shot in the latter location. In order to keep the movie feeling authentic, Costner opted to build the movie’s town from scratch instead of using western towns already located in Canada, since they seemed too fake.
Open Range might be Costner’s last western movie, but he later starred alongside the late, great Bill Paxton in miniseries Hatfields & McCoys in 2012, based on the infamous historical feud between the titular families. The miniseries also marked a reunion between Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds, after the pair had a very public falling out making Waterworld.
