Death, greed, courage, and destruction: welcome to the American West. Riding into this dramatic territory is Kevin Costner, who explored the slaughter of the Sioux in his Oscar-winning directorial debut Dances With Wolves. Open Range takes place in an injun-free arena, with the director-star playing a cowpoke whose shady past could save a cattle drive from a lethal landowner (Michael Gambon). Slowed down somewhat by a shoehorned-in love story, it's overlong and unoriginal but never less than entertaining - topped by a terrific gunfight.

Charley Waite (Costner) has ridden with Boss (the excellent Robert Duvall) for ten years without ever knowing his real name, while his own hides a history of horrors. "There's things that gnaw on a man worse than dying," he scowls, as the threat of the thugs brings back nightmare memories. But for all the post-traumatic stress and blurry, bug-eyed camerawork, these scenes never really convince. 'Justified' revenge is the theme of the film - interesting in the light of America's reaction to the World Trade Center attack - and the hand-wringing over violence is shown to be insincere in the conventional, if expertly executed, conclusion.

"MASTERPIECE OF UNEXPECTED ACTION"

Waite is most believable (and the movie most honest) in his man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do moments, adopting an unapologetic, matter of fact manner to vengeance. "Men are gonna get killed here today and I'm gonna do the killing," he tells Sue (Annette Bening), in one of the awkward romantic interludes which drag down the story. Grim-faced he may be, but the character is good at killing and you suspect that, secretly, both he and the filmmaker are looking forward to the face-off with Gambon's corrupt capitalist.

The inevitable gunfight is, somewhat perversely, the peak of the picture. A tightly-structured 20-minute masterpiece of whipsmart edits and unexpected action, it's the equal of any shootout ever filmed. Despite the brutality, it's still a decidedly Hollywood ending, but if the rest of film was as energetic, Open Range would be unmissable instead of just on target.