With guns blazing and horses kicking up dust, the Western hero has returned.

"Open Range," released on DVD and video last week, offers the best recent example of the Western hero, a man thought to be obsolete in an age of cynicism and despair – but now riding proudly into the sunrise.

The quintessential Western hero is strong, soft-spoken, tough, courageous, honorable and self-effacing. He’s Gary Cooper heading for the showdown in "High Noon," Gregory Peck telling his fiancé "I’m not responsible for what people think, only for what I am," in "The Big Country," Robert Mitchum in "River of No Return," and John Wayne in "Stagecoach" and "Angel And The Bad Man."

The Western hero has an unspoken code of honor. He believes in duty, loyalty and protecting the weak. No knight errant riding the Plains in search of dragons to slay, he tries to avoid trouble. But he doesn’t run from it either. As the cliché goes, he doesn’t start fights – he finishes them.

"Open Range," starring a subdued Kevin Costner and an exuberant Robert Duvall, is a showcase for heroism a la saddles and six-shooters.

Costner is Charley Waite, a man with a troubled past. Duvall plays Boss Spearman, ramrod of a small outfit of free-grazers. When the drovers are set upon (one of their number killed and another badly wounded), the pair takes on a powerful rancher, his hired guns and a venal sheriff.

In a saloon hall confrontation, Duvall states his case in classic Western-hero fashion when he tells the townsfolk, "Man’s got a right to protect his life and property, and no rancher or his lawman’s gonna take it away."

The Western hero can be flawed. Frequently, he’s an ex-outlaw or a reformed gunfighter who’s compelled by conscience to atone for past misdeeds. Costner confesses to Annette Bening (the spinster he woos), "I’m not the man you think I am, Sue. Men are going to die today, and I’m going to kill them." Later, he tells Duvall that he was once such a man as those they’re going up against.

Bening’s rejoinder to Costner: "I’ve been waiting for someone kind and caring to come along. I know the kind of man you are, Charlie. I can see it in your concern for Button (the wounded drover) and the respect you give Boss. Little things, but it’s enough for a woman who looks." Virtuous too is the Western woman – wise, stalwart and loving.

The Western hero takes no joy in killing, even in a just cause. When Costner seems intent on dispatching a wounded man ("I don’t want to spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder."), Duvall, the grizzled trail boss, stops him. It’s one thing to kill in the heat of battle, and quite another in cold blood. Even in gunfights, there’s the code.

The Western hero may be contrasted with the modern anti-hero. The anti-hero comes in many guises – rogue cop, secret agent, soldier of fortune. Most often, he’s a gangster. He’s Al Pacino in "The Godfather" or "Scarface," Warren Beatty in "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Bugsy," Dustin Hoffman in "Billy Bathgate," and Robert De Niro as Al Capone in "The Untouchables."

The Western hero and gangster anti-hero are flip sides of a coin. (The anti-hero is individualism’s dark side.) Both are loners --outnumbered and besieged. Both employ violence to fight the system.

But that’s where the similarities end. The anti-hero is a spiritual anarchist. He acknowledges no law higher than himself. Though the Western hero may find himself on the wrong side of the law (when the law has been corrupted), by fighting for justice, he upholds a moral code.

The anti-hero may fight for his family (literal or figurative), but that’s as far as his loyalty extends. He enjoys violence and freely indulges his appetite for mayhem.

He’s a tragic figure, a la Pacino in "The Godfather" trilogy, who ends badly. We’re told that circumstances – poverty, brutality, prejudice – have conspired to make him what he is. On the other hand, the Western hero is always in control of his destiny.

The anti-hero is the product of a chaotic universe. For him, violence is a primal scream directed at an uncaring existence. It’s a pathetic attempt at self-assertion in the face of random forces rushing us headlong toward oblivion.

The Western hero is the affirmation of a universe with meaning and free will, one in which individuals shape their destiny through their moral choices. The Western hero doesn’t always survive, but by his deeds he wins the ultimate battle.

It’s no coincidence that the late 1960s saw the decline of the Western hero and the simultaneous rise of the gangster anti-hero, beginning with "Bonnie And Clyde." The noble Westerner, a cinematic staple since the era of silent films, fell out of favor – not with moviegoers but with studios, critics and other arbiters of culture.

The John Wayne-type was derided as unrealistic and one-dimensional. He didn’t have enough angst. (He suffered silently instead of volubly.) He was old-fashioned, cornball, preachy – or so they told us.

When the New Left was in the streets, smashing windows and stoning cops (or killing them, in the case of the Black Panthers) – the anti-hero became fashionable. The gangster film mirrored the corruption and hopelessness the left saw as endemic in our society.

The anti-hero reflected the left’s worldview: Freedom is an illusion. The here and now is all there is. Morality is relative. Life sucks. Salvation (of sorts) can only be found in rejection, renunciation and self-actualizing acts of violence.

As the pessimistic/nihilistic left captured the engines of pop culture (Hollywood, music and literature) the anti-hero became increasingly prominent, while the Western hero was put out to pasture. Compare the number of cowboy movies made in the ‘70s and ‘80s to the number of gangster films.

The anti-hero reached his apogee in "American Beauty," whose central character hates his suburban life and family. After successfully blackmailing his boss, he quits his job, tools around town in a flashy sports car and devotes himself to pot and bodybuilding, the latter in pursuit of his teenaged daughter’s cheerleader girlfriend.

He longs to return to the halcyon days of his youth, when his highest ambition was getting high and getting laid. In death, he derives satisfaction from reflecting on the meaninglessness of his "pathetic, little life."

All cinema offers moral instruction of one sort or another. The Western hero says buck up, be a man, stand up for your rights, protect the weak, treat women with respect, take control of your destiny. Many men of my father’s generation – who went through the Great Depression, won World War II and came home to fuel the postwar economic boom – learned about manhood at the Saturday matinee. Those priceless lessons were applied at places like Bataan, Guadalcanal, Normandy and the Bulge.

Americans today need that instruction in heroism every bit as much as their grandparents – maybe more, with a polluted culture and a fifth column sowing defeatism in the war on terrorism.

"Open Range" provides an opening for decency and other timeless values. Here’s to you, partner.