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A Perfect World [1993]
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
This curiously overlooked drama from Clint Eastwood, released just after his Oscar triumph with Unforgiven, concerns a prisoner (Kevin Costner) on the run with a kidnapped young boy as protection and the Texas Ranger (Eastwood) and federal agent (Laura Dern) on his tail. Eastwood manages a number of nice touches--the boy's innocence is nicely contrasted with Costner's soft-spoken desperado by the Casper Halloween costume he wears and the law-enforcement officials look vaguely foolish, travelling around the countryside with a high-tech camper in tow. Eastwood gives a grizzled performance that, despite its seen-it-all surface, still feels fresh after all these years, and he coaxes surprisingly sensitive work out of Costner. But it's the sheer, modest scale of this piece that makes it so disarming--no planet lies in jeopardy, there are no cosmic make-or-break consequences here, just committed people doing their job and a well-meaning bad guy hoping things don't get too out of hand while he prevents them from doing so. --David Kronke
Classic film, classic acting, classic director.
Review date: 2008-04-04 Rating: 8 out of 10
Clint Eastwood stars in and directs this story of an escaped convict, who whilst trying to flee the police takes a boy hostage. Pursued by the law, the convict (Kevin Costner) starts to bond with the boy and realises that the boys father isn't around, so the boy starts to look up to him too. It's a warming story of how in the most dire circumstances a warmth can come out of it. With the police on their tail and obstacles in their way, Costner must decide wether to give up the boy or to give himself in. This is a great film, with great acting including support from Laura Dern (Jurassic park). It would be 5 star if it had been a little faster moving in a few areas, but still very good and a watch suitable for most ages.
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Reviews
Not perfect, but rather good
Review date: 2007-12-15 Rating: 6 out of 10
At 130 minutes, A Perfect World is certainly overlong - Kevin Costner takes even longer to die than Marlon Brando did in Mutiny on the Bounty - but compared to most films that attempt to pair box-office giants and simply ending up alienating both star's followings, it's actually rather good. Clint Eastwood the director fares better than Eastwood the actor, who could quite easily be cut out of the film, having little to do and doing it with minimum interest. Ditto Laura Dern's psychologist, who seems to be there solely to give Eastwood someone to talk to, but Costner is surprisingly good as the maladjusted convict on the run, coming into his own in a scene where he terrorises a black family (it's at this point you can just hear the film's box-office potential nosedive) with T.J. Lowther convincingly unmovielike as the young Jehovah's Witness he takes hostage and shows how to have fun. A minor film, perhaps, but with a darkness behind the humour that recalls Thunderbolt and Lightfoot it's well worth checking out.
beautiful
Review date: 2007-11-14 Rating: 10 out of 10
It's on watching movies like this that I feel sorry for Kevin Costner. He deserves so much more credit than he gets. In 'A perfect world' he plays the role of 'Butch', an escaped convict who takes a young boy hostage. Phil is a 7yr old without a father and a mother with strict rules due to their religion. Soon he and Butch begin to forge a strong bond which is simply born of Butch treating Phil with the love he wishes his father showed. It's a very touching relationship to watch grow.
However it doesn't go overboard in making us forget that Butch is still a criminal with a goal. He steals, kills and hurts people as and when necessary.
Clint Eastwood and Laura Dern play the cop and criminalist who are out to recapture Butch but in my opinion this takes a backseat to the rest of the movie. It's very oldstyle cowboy talk from Eastwood while Dern fights her way into being recognised for her talents.
This is a wonderful movie which I would recommend to anyone. It explores the humanity in all of us irrespective of past crimes and titles.
Costner rediscovers his touch after 'Dances with Wolves'
Review date: 2007-06-14 Rating: 10 out of 10
There is something uncommon about this movie. It is hard to put my finger on. Parts of it are very touching. Parts of it are sad. I agree with the previous reviewer that Kevin Costner gives one of the best performances of his career in this movie. You find yourself thinking that even though his character Butch does bad things, he is not really a bad person, but you can't really be sure, because he is pretty complex. I think the little boy saves him from being a bad person, or at least shows that he is definitely not all bad. In the end, it is like Laura Dern says - "In a perfect world, this wouldn't happen." I find myself watching this movie whenever I come across it, and would definitely recommend it.
Eastwood journeys deeper into the heart of the American male
Review date: 2006-04-05 Rating: 10 out of 10
Continuing his exploration of what makes a man good, bad -- just plain human-- is what this film delves into, even more deeply than in the stunning "Unforgiven" (to his credit, Eastwood never pretends, as some male writers and directors do, that he understands women; instead, he admits that we are mysteries to him, and concentrates his energies on what he does understand: American men). Refusing to subscribe to typical American cinematic over-simplifications of "good vs. evil," Clint Eastwood delivers films that make you realize very quickly that there is no room for such absolutes when dealing with human truths. This thesis, which he has been pursuing for some time now, perhaps starting with "Tightrope" where the line between good and evil blurs to invisibility, he has, with "A Perfect World," given us a translation of John Lee Hancock's brilliant screenplay that is both beautiful and almost too painful to bear. Noted by critics at the time of its relase, but completley ignored by audiences who, it seems, found Kevin Costner as an escaped convict just too unpalatable, this film takes us on a complex journey deep into the souls of two tortured men, Costner's "Butch Haynes" and Eastwood's "Red," the Texas Ranger who is charged with running the escaped Haynes down. The past and its consequences are a continual theme in all of Eastwood's important works, and in this film, the ironies are neck-deep and take time and patience from the viewer to unravel. Even the decision by Red to commandeer the vehicle the Governer intends to ride in the next day when President Kennedy will be in Dallas (this is 1963) brings up the question: would the Governer have been shot had he been in this vehicle instead of in the President's car? This is one subtle example of how decision and consequence are continously explored in this most thought-provoking of films.
Kevin Costner gave probably the best performance of his life, cast against type as a complex man who cannot be called either bad or good, merely profoundly human, whose life has followed a course laid by poverty, homelessness, a suicide mother and a felonious father, a bit of high spirits, and high intelligence with nowhere to go, but most importantly, the Texas penal system as it was managed in the 60's. Haynes' moral center, despite his acts, never wavers, and it is that moral center that propels events which finally spiral out of his control and into tragedy. But we see, clearly, that even a so-called "bad" man can be good enough to inspire genuine, deep love that, in the end, redeems both him and the person whose initial action started the long chain of events that ends with the 36 hours over which this film takes place (we discover who this is along the way, and I don't want to lessen the impact of any discoveries). Another reviewer here implied that it was Eastwood who is responsible for Costner's excellence in this film, but having seen so many interviews with his actors, it is generally understood that Eastwood casts his actors, then leaves them alone to find the character and reveal him without a great deal of interference, so it would seem that the credit is, indeed, Costner's. Sadly, he never again worked against type, perhaps because of this film's commercial failure, but this performance will always stand as testament to what he can do, and never is that performance better than in the house where Cajun music on the Victrola and senseless violence against a boy much of an age as Butch himself was when violence entered his life, combine to send him into a sort of fugue state of memory, pain, longing, rage, and ultimately, the loss of control that brings things to a terrible end.
The boy, Philip, with whom he bonds (played beautifully by the transparent T.J. Lowther) also gives us his heart laid bare, and the rapport between the two of them is completely believable. We understand the child's repeated choices to stay with Butch, and the reasons go far beyond the superficial need for a father (his is gone), and into the realm of love. It is from Haynes that he learns the lesson that exacts the price of Haynes' escape, but then it is his love for Haynes that makes it bearable, and even right, for both of them, as in the end, he becomes the protector--the man--whose job it is to help a loved-one who can no longer help himself.
When a film's characters are torn apart by the end of a film, its viewers should be, too, and we definitely are. It is a difficult, heart-breaking journey that Clint Eastwood insists we take with him, but taking it brings us to the point where we should start each day: from scratch. Red's last line is, "I don't know a da*n thing anymore," and that is exactly the point and the purpose of this story. We should never, ever think we have all the answers; to do so is fatal, as Red learns. Every day we should be willing to examine our beliefs and look back, with honesty, at what we've done, and look forward to what we're about to do with eyes wide open and with some sort of awareness of potential damage, and know, always, that there is no good "us," no bad "them," but that we're all only human beings, deeply flawed and yet filled with the capacity for love and connection, each of us doing the best we can.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
T.J. Lowther
Kevin Costner
Laura Dern
Keith Szarabajka
Clint Eastwood
Creators:
Kevin Costner (Primary Contributor)
Clint Eastwood (Primary Contributor)
Clint Eastwood (Producer)
Jack N. Green (Cinematographer)
Joel Cox (Editor)
Ron Spang (Editor)
David Valdes (Producer)
Mark Johnson (Producer)
John Lee Hancock (Writer)
Director(s):
Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900129909
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Subtitled,
Release date: 2003-01-27
Number of discs: 1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 132 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1993-11-24
Language: English (Original Language)