Raised a Jehovah's Witness, Phillip has been denied many of the common pleasures of being a child - like being able to dress up for Halloween. For the boy, who is too young to know what's really going on, the kidnapping quickly becomes the adventure of a lifetime. Most of the film is spent in the car with the convict and his hostage, Phillip (played with remarkable restraint by T.J. I have no idea how audiences will react to this intimate, unassuming, gently funny character study. This isn't the first time that Eastwood has turned the tables on our expectations, but he's never been this bold in the past, or this sure of himself. Directed by Eastwood from a script by John Lee Hancock, "A Perfect World" is one of the Academy Award-winning actor-director's most unexpected, most satisfying films. The answer is "Not here, so get used to it." And strangely enough, we do. In other words, where is the Clint Eastwood we know? Watching it, you think, where's the action, the crashing cars, the gunplay and the glib one-liners? For a movie about a cop chasing an escaped prisoner, it seems curiously languid, almost meditative. Standing tall and lean in his ranger's uniform and white cowboy hat, he looks capable but sleepy, as if he plans to hop right on the case just as soon as he wakes up from his nap.Īctually, not much happens after Red begins his search either, and for a while the unhurried, devil-may-care pace that Eastwood has given to his material is disorienting. The year is 1963, and when Red hears that a career criminal named Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) has busted out of prison and taken a small boy hostage, he acts like he's been told that a kitty is stuck in a tree. In "A Perfect World," Clint Eastwood plays a legendary Texas Ranger named Red Garnett, but it's hard to tell just how the character came by that legendary status. I don't know a damn thing.Children under 13 should be accompanied by a parent As Butch and Phillip form a father-son attachment, the paths of Butch and Garnett gradually come together, in time for a final confrontation, after which Garnett confesses, "I don't know nothing. Butch is not particularly anxious to make it to the Texas borderline, and neither is Garnett in any particular hurry to catch Butch. The cop in pursuit in this instance is Police Chief Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood), riding in his sleek Populux Airglide trailer - his "mobile command headquarters." On the road with Garnett is Sally Gerber (Laura Dern), a pushy pre-feminist criminologist, along with a creepy federal agent who is an expert sharpshooter. Butch gets rid of his fellow escapee after he tries to molest the child, and Butch and Phillip take to the Texas highway, on the run from the cops. Phillip curiously looks up to Butch and willingly accompanies him. Needing a hostage to aid him in his escape from jail, he grabs Phillip. But then prison escapee Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) appears in his kitchen. Lowther), the son of a devout Jehovah's Witness mother, is staying home while all the other children are out trick-or-treating. The film takes place during the fall of 1963. Clint Eastwood, hot off of his Academy Award win for Unforgiven, directed this small character study, appearing in the guise of a cops-and-robbers action picture.
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