Kevin Costner plays a complex villain in Clint Eastwood's film
Film Review by Mike Martinez
Film Review by Mike Martinez
Published Thursday, December 2, 1993
UCSD Guardian Hiatus Arts & Entertainment,
UCSD Guardian Hiatus Arts & Entertainment,
In a perfect
world, so to speak, Butch Haynes would never have been abandoned by his father
– an event which led to his rebellion against society.
In a perfect
world, he would never have received an unusually harsh sentence for his first
offense as a juvenile, nor would he have subsequently learned the skills of a
criminal while in prison.
Clint
Eastwood doesn’t usually make films about perfect worlds, and A Perfect World
is no exception. His protagonists are
usually world-weary men with a past – iconoclastic loners like Harry Callahan
or soaring, flawed gems like Charlie Parker. In this follow-up to the
Oscar-winning Unforgiven, director Eastwood tells a story in which some of the
good guys have a little bad in them, and the villain is the most complex figure
of all.
As portrayed
by Kevin Costner, Butch Haynes is part gentleman, part feral beast, with the
honed instincts of an outlaw. He breaks out of prison aided by a sadistic
fellow inmate, Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka). It’s apparent that they don’t
like each other – Haynes is calm and controlled, Pugh is violent and brutal.
Szarabajka
contributes one of the few discordant moments in the story. When the convicts
take eight-year old Philip Perry (T.J. Lowther) hostage, Pugh heaps absurd
brutality on the kid, and Haynes eventually kills Pugh. Haynes is acutely
sensitive to the mistreatment of children, and is only under such a situation
that he is capable of violence. This trait is shown repeatedly, as is the
tension between his good and dark sides.
Once on the
road, the convict and the boy find a rapport, sharing the common bond of having
absent fathers. Haynes treats the boy like a protoge, and Philip is glad to
have a father figure. Meanwhile, the police begin tracking the two as they flee
across the Texas Panhandle.
The honcho
of this manhunt is Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Eastwood). Red is your basic,
no-nonsense cop, but Eastwood gives the portrayal a few nuances. It turns out
Red was the one who recommended the stiff sentence for the juvenile Haynes.
Although Red never shows any overt regret for his actions, Eastwood manages
subtle, understated compassion for the fugitive.
As the
pursuit continues, many of the lighthearted moments are almost reminiscent of
Bonnie and Clyde. Haynes respects his wide-eyed hostage as a full partner,
giving him some comical lessons in robbery, firearms and even whore chasing. He
creates a fantasy life wherein he plays father and allows Philip to do all the
fun things that were previously denied by his strict, Jehovah’s Witness mother.
The genuine
chemistry between Costner and Lowther carries the film. The boy is cute and
trusting, and his affection for Haynes is totally convincing. Their
relationship is not really a father/son bond, but more like that of little Joey
and the gunfighter in the classic Shane. Costner is clearly in his prime here,
adding sinister shadings to his familiar Bull Durham amiability. Maybe it’s not
a perfect world, but it is a world that shows an actor reaching a new place and
a director at the top of his game.