Open Range is a 2003 Western movie based on the novel The Open Range Men by Lauran Paine. The film was directed and co-produced by Kevin Costner, who stars with Robert Duvall and Annette Bening.
The movie properly belongs to the Western genre and 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.
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.
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