Overview

The movie properly belongs to the epic Western genre and has the feel of Costner’s earlier epic, Dances with Wolves (1990). The movie is set in Montana in 1882 (the year is seen on a new grave marker) though the movie was filmed entirely on location in Alberta, Canada.

The background of the movie concerns the “range wars” that occurred in the American West in the late 1800s. The “wars” pitted those that believed in the “Law of the Open Range” – free access to water and grass for everyone, against the “barbed wire” men – land barons, who used the new fencing to define their empire and block the free-range cattlemen from moving their herds.

Characters

Bluebonnet “Boss” Spearman (played by Robert Duvall) is an aging cowboy and the leader of the free-rangers. He is an experienced horse-rider and cattleman, who appears hard and a staunch traditionalist on the outside, but is in fact a very caring man. He once had a wife and a child, but they contracted thyphoid and died, causing him to abandon his old life. At the start of the movie, he is beginning to realize that the age of free grazing – and thus his way of life – is coming to an end.

Charles Travis Postlewaite (played by Kevin Costner) was a soldier during the Civil War and later a gunslinger. Having killed a man who tried to rape his mother when he was still very young, he soon became accustomed to killing people – and quite good at it. He eventually became a free-ranger, working for Boss Spearman under the name Charley Waite for more than ten years. The terrible things he and others did during the war continue to haunt him in his dreams, making him sometimes dangerous for those around him. When he arrives in Harmonville, his past catches up with him, but he also finds a chance for love and a future.

Sue Barlow (played by Annette Bening) is the sister and assistant of Harmonville’s physician, Doc Barlow, and lives with him in a house just outside the town. She falls in love with Charley Waite when the free-rangers arrive with a badly hurt Button and, although finding him a complicated man with a difficult past, convinces Charley that they could have a happy future together. She is a strong and righteous woman, daring to speak up against the tyrant Baxter and putting herself in danger to protect her patients on more than one occasion.

Denton Baxter (played by Michael Gambon) is a Irish-born land baron who considers Harmonville “his” town. He is arrogant and greedy, using his band of henchman as well as the corrupt Marshall Poole to rule the town and keep off freegrazers. When he orders his men to ambush Boss Spearman’s men and Mose is killed, a brutal conflict begins, in which Baxter shows that he does not have a problem with putting women and children in the line of fire, finally turning most of Harmonville against him. He has one estranged daughter.

Button (played by Diego Luna) is Spearman’s Mexican-born youngest hand and also kind of a foster child to the other free-rangers who found him living on the streets years before. He is badly hurt by Baxter’s men, but recovers and plays an important role in the final gun-fight.

Mose Harris (played by Abraham Benrubi) is another of Boss Spearman’s hands, a large and peaceful man. He gets into a bar fight in Harmonville and is later killed by Baxter’s henchman Butler.

Percy (played by Michael Jeter in his last on-screen role) is a Harmonville townsman who warns Boss and Charley about Baxter’s men and is the only one who stands with the free-rangers right from the beginning.

Trivia

• Herbert Kohler, Jr. played an extra in the final fire fight in the town. He told the filmmakers he would do it if they let him “ride a horse, or shoot a gun”. He was too heavy to get on a horse, so they let him shoot a shotgun.