A Perfect World

Look out – Clint Eastwood is brooding again. And Kevin Costner is brooding with him. At least, it appears that that’s the mood of A Perfect World. The flick is one of those odd movies in which the superstars hardly ever appear together, so the actors mostly brood alone.

Despite the movie’s title, they have a lot to brood about. The movie’s set in Texas in late October, 1963 – President Kennedy’s assassination is but a few weeks away. (It appears that Eastwood has caught the JFK bug. Perhaps he sat too close to Oliver Stone at the Oscars.) It’s the waning days of what journalists like to refer to as the time of American innocence. Lack of innocence, however, is the whole point of the movie.

Costner plays Butch Haynes, an escaped convict whose taste for Ford cars has led him on a path from teenage joy-riding to career criminal. Oddly enough, however, this hot-rodding heister has an odd protective streak for kids. This unexpected part of Costner’s personality is displayed when a small boy joins him for a chase through the Texas hill-country.

Technically, the kid is his hostage, but Costner likes kids too much to hurt him. It’s abusive fathers Costner can’t stand. In fact, they get him half-crazy.

Eastwood, meanwhile, plays a Geritol-swigging Texas Ranger who’s sent after Costner. He’s hot for the hunt, but not for the kill. After a lot of staring, Eastwood finally confesses that he was the lawman who first railroaded the teenage Costner into jail. He thought he was helping the young man out by saving him from a vicious father. It may have seemed logical, but apparently Clint never spent time in a Texas slammer.

Now he feels guilt ridden about the whole thing and is privately hoping that he can take Costner alive. It’s just that the two bodies Kevin left in his wake make that plan a little difficult to follow through on. The itchy-fingered marksman who’s on the hunt with Eastwood doesn’t make things any easier, either. (I think we’re back to that Kennedy thing.)

A Perfect World is a strangely disjointed production. The movie suggests that it has a big, serious topic at its center, but never quite gets to it. Like its own chase, the movie keeps promising to veer off in a major direction, only to come to a dead end.

A Perfect World has its moments. It’s just too bad Eastwood couldn’t decide what kind of film he was making.