Starring: Christopher Reagan Ammons, Leo Burmester, Kevin Costner, Darryl Cox, Laura Dern Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: October 01, 2002 Running Time: 138 minutes Theatrical Release Date: November 24, 1993
Description: Double Academy Award winners' Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood confront each other from opposite sides of the law in A Perfect World, an acclaimed, multilayered manhunt saga (directed by Eastwood) that rumbles down Texas backroads toward a harrowing collision with fate. Costner plays Butch Haynes, a hardened prison escapee on the lam with a young hostage (T.J. Lowther in a remarkable film debut) who sees in Butch the father figure he never had. Eastwood is wily Texas Ranger Red Garnett, leading deputies and a criminologist (Laura Dern) in a statewide pursuit. Red knows every road and pothole in the Panhandle. What's more, he knows the elusive Haynes-because their paths have crossed before.
Amazon.com essential video: This curiously overlooked drama from Clint Eastwood, released just after his Oscar triumph with Unforgiven, concerns a prisoner (Kevin Costner) on the lam 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, tooling 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 it. --David Kronke
Clint's minor masterwork This film again established Clint Eastwood as an important director to watch but this film proved to be disappointing at the box office despite good reviews. Perhaps it strikes too close to home for many Americans to examine what's happening to our kids when we neglect them and they turn out like character Costner plays as an escaped convict who despite everything has a soft side to him in his relationship to the little boy he befriends. Eastwood, himself, wisely took a supporting role as the sheriff who hunts Costner then realizes where he he has gone wrong in his early treatment of Butch (Costner). There is a powerful scene almost 2/3 a way in the movie when Costner's dark side emerges when he witnesses a father physically abusing his son--it is a scene so well played and directed that it stays in your mind long after the movie is over. In a way, Eastwood was preparing a warm up to his excellent "Mystic River" but also this represents some of Costner's best acting (although he and Eastwood did not get along during filming). Whole-heartedly recommended for all Eastwood buffs.
What a ride! A Perfect World starring and directed by Clint Eastwood is an intriguing story of a strange and unlikely friendship between a young boy and the man who kidnaps him. Kevin Costner plays the kidnapper who is running from the sherrif played by Eastwood. I enjoyed this movie, I wasn't expecting such a moving piece of storytelling. I highly recommend checking this under-rated gem out!
This is present Phillip, enjoy while it lasts I got this movie as a birthday present 2 years ago. I love it. As a Clint Eastwood fan, I enjoy it very much, here we have a CLint Eastwood against Costner. What I love about Eastwood movies is the fact that he always brings up the best of human beings and explore that. Here we have an exconvict in a runway along with a boy he took from a home..... The little boy called Phillip will steal your heart..
A movie to watch more than once...
Not perfect, but rather good 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.
less than a perfect world In a perfect world this story could not be told. In a perfect world there would be no child abuse or neglect and damaged children. In a perfect world an eight-year-old boy would not kill a man abusing his mother.
This is not a perfect world and so the story is told. Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) grew up in a brothel in New Orleans, killed his mother's abuser, but was not punished. At age 12 Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood) saw to it that Butch was sent to juvie lockup for four years, with the idea of protecting him from his felonious and abusive father.
When the movie starts, Butch and another man break out of prison, kidnap Phillip, just a boy caught up one of those situations. The other man is eliminated from the story early on. Butch and Phillip begin their road trip, a movement toward Alaska for Butch, a growing affection for a father he never had for Phillip. The synergy created by this man, neither good nor bad, and boy grows from negatives--each trying to create in Butch a father figure for those absent.
As in any road trip film, encounters with others mark the travelers in terms of character. Butch never intentionally harms anyone until child abuse occurs. Even then the viewer knows there will be no physical harm.
Inevitably, the manhunt ends and it isn't pleasant. After I saw this movie at the theater, I cried all the way home. The ex was annoyed and told me it was just a movie. Some people don't understand that art IS the truth. Child abuse does exist and does ruin lives. According to Laura Dern's character, a criminologist, Butch was tested in prison for high intelligence. Imagine what he could have been with a typical life! Even with his flawed background, he tried to do right by Phillip, even at the end.
A perfect world. It does not exist. So what is a person to do? A criminologist tries to teach explanations and understandings. Law enforcement tries to protect others by rounding up the doers of evil and bad things. Those caught in the ring of violence try to escape to a better life. Not everyone wins in a world that is not perfect.
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