But it carries a specific thematic weight when considering the Eastwood filmmaking trajectory and the characters he’s given us in the quarter century since. It was the actor/director’s follow up to his Oscar winning masterpiece Unforgiven, and was subsequently lost in the overpowering cinematic moment that was Schindler’s List in the fall of 1993, right along with just about every other year-end release.
These wounds run like a river beneath the illusory idyllic surface of mid-century Texas in Eastwood’s A Perfect World, which turned 25 this month. What’s left, then, after the neglect and the abuse, is molded into a societal miscreant and shuffled into the prison system. He was, like so many characters have been in Clint Eastwood films since A Perfect World, a man poisoned by the sins of his own father, condemned to pass along whatever damaged deck he was dealt. While a hardened criminal, as a surrogate father to the boy his motives are grounded in morality "I've only ever killed two people," he tells Phillip, "one hurt my mamma, one hurt you." Inevitably Haynes' affections are reciprocated by the boy, but unlike the back-story in which it transpires that it was Clint who recommended Haynes be sent to the juvenile detention centre where he learned the tricks of his criminal trade, the sentiments expressed ring true.Butch Haynes never wanted to be a criminal, it just sort of happened somewhere along the way.
And despite a wobbly Texan twang, Costner equips himself more than admirably, his Haynes exhibiting a dangerous, potentially murderous unpredictability, but conversely a warmth and compassion in his dealings with children. Indeed, with both Dern and Clint very much on the periphery, it's the relationship between Costner and the boy that is at the heart of the film. Representing justice are Dern's state-appointed omni-nologist and Clint's grizzled Texas Ranger who set off in lukewarm pursuit, taking their manhunt to the backroads of Texas within the confines of a sleek silver caravan their paths intersecting with Haynes only twice. Set in a Texas still awaiting JFK's fateful visit, this is little more than a Western in 60s dress, with Costner's William "Butch" Haynes breaking out of prison along with fellow convict Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka), and setting off on an ill-founded quest to Alaska, taking hostage a fatherless eight-year-old Jehovah's Witness called Phillip (T.J.
The problem herein is not that Costner is cast against acceptable type as a murderous con on the lam, but that John Lee Hancock's script which offers half a dozen intriguing and potentially explosive possibilities, the majority of which come off as blanks under Clint's direction allows the film to boil over in the heat of the midday sun, when, ideally, it needed to be left to simmer. Equally perplexing is the question of just which audience the film is aimed at, being neither mainstream-friendly enough to satisfy those who lapped up Costner's do-goody turn in last year's The Bodyguard, nor those expecting another masterpiece from Eastwood in the wake of the Oscar-winning Unforgiven. Add to the mix Kevin Costner, who with Dances With Wolves proved himself the one-time possible heir to Clint's actor-director throne, and it's doubly disappointing to report that A Perfect World, while not a total disaster by any means, squanders the talents of Eastwood and to a lesser extent Costner, as well as those of Dern, who appears, literally, to be along for the ride to counter-balance the prodigious amount of testosterone on display here. Even before the glorius triumph of of Unforgiven, a palpable sense of expectation greeted any project directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.
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