Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14496 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-01-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 132 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This curiously overlooked drama from Clint Eastwood, released just after his Oscar triumph with Unforgiven, concerns a prisoner (Kevin Costner) on the run 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, travelling 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 so. --David Kronke

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
Set in Texas in 1963, Clint Eastwood's film is a subtle and haunting work that features what is perhaps Kevin Costner's best performance. Costner plays against type as Butch Haynes, an escaped convict whose tendency toward violence is masked by his affability. Haynes escapes with a more blatantly dangerous convict, Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka), planning to ditch him as soon as they cross the border. But Pugh's lack of self-control gets them in trouble, and they take a young boy hostage. Raised by his single mother, a Jehovah's Witness, Phillip Perry (T.J. Lowther, in a heartbreakingly real performance) is fascinated by Haynes's roughneck ways, and the two form a surprisingly strong bond. Eastwood takes a supporting role as Red Garnett, the lawman who, ineptly but inevitably, is closing in on Haynes. With a woman criminologist (Laura Dern) and a trigger-happy federal agent along for the ride, Garnett chases Haynes down while keeping their shared past a secret from his team.

Customer Reviews

unusual and touching road movie
Clint Eastwood's Texas Ranger plays second fiddle to Costner's escaped convict in this unusual and touching road movie with a difference.Costner takes a boy hostage whilst evading recapture and develops a father/son relationship with him that's played to perfection.That's basically it but the film is never tedious or overly sentimental. We learn,through Dern's criminologist, that Costner is just a misunderstood guy whose pop never loved him, whilst his mom turned tricks in the brothel that was his home. Eastwood knows all that and won't shoot to kill. There's only a small flicker of the psycho in Costner in one scene, not quite enough to keep us from empathising with him and hoping that he won't get caught.Probably not "mainstream" enough to have wowed the critics but it's still a good film.

Eastwood journeys deeper into the heart of the American male
Continuing his exploration of what makes a man good, bad -- just plain human-- is what this film delves into, even more deeply than in the stunning "Unforgiven" (to his credit, Eastwood never pretends, as some male writers and directors do, that he understands women; instead, he admits that we are mysteries to him, and concentrates his energies on what he does understand: American men). Refusing to subscribe to typical American cinematic over-simplifications of "good vs. evil," Clint Eastwood delivers films that make you realize very quickly that there is no room for such absolutes when dealing with human truths. This thesis, which he has been pursuing for some time now, perhaps starting with "Tightrope" where the line between good and evil blurs to invisibility, he has, with "A Perfect World," given us a translation of John Lee Hancock's brilliant screenplay that is both beautiful and almost too painful to bear. Noted by critics at the time of its relase, but completley ignored by audiences who, it seems, found Kevin Costner as an escaped convict just too unpalatable, this film takes us on a complex journey deep into the souls of two tortured men, Costner's "Butch Haynes" and Eastwood's "Red," the Texas Ranger who is charged with running the escaped Haynes down. The past and its consequences are a continual theme in all of Eastwood's important works, and in this film, the ironies are neck-deep and take time and patience from the viewer to unravel. Even the decision by Red to commandeer the vehicle the Governer intends to ride in the next day when President Kennedy will be in Dallas (this is 1963) brings up the question: would the Governer have been shot had he been in this vehicle instead of in the President's car? This is one subtle example of how decision and consequence are continously explored in this most thought-provoking of films.
Kevin Costner gave probably the best performance of his life, cast against type as a complex man who cannot be called either bad or good, merely profoundly human, whose life has followed a course laid by poverty, homelessness, a suicide mother and a felonious father, a bit of high spirits, and high intelligence with nowhere to go, but most importantly, the Texas penal system as it was managed in the 60's. Haynes' moral center, despite his acts, never wavers, and it is that moral center that propels events which finally spiral out of his control and into tragedy. But we see, clearly, that even a so-called "bad" man can be good enough to inspire genuine, deep love that, in the end, redeems both him and the person whose initial action started the long chain of events that ends with the 36 hours over which this film takes place (we discover who this is along the way, and I don't want to lessen the impact of any discoveries). Another reviewer here implied that it was Eastwood who is responsible for Costner's excellence in this film, but having seen so many interviews with his actors, it is generally understood that Eastwood casts his actors, then leaves them alone to find the character and reveal him without a great deal of interference, so it would seem that the credit is, indeed, Costner's. Sadly, he never again worked against type, perhaps because of this film's commercial failure, but this performance will always stand as testament to what he can do, and never is that performance better than in the house where Cajun music on the Victrola and senseless violence against a boy much of an age as Butch himself was when violence entered his life, combine to send him into a sort of fugue state of memory, pain, longing, rage, and ultimately, the loss of control that brings things to a terrible end.

The boy, Philip, with whom he bonds (played beautifully by the transparent T.J. Lowther) also gives us his heart laid bare, and the rapport between the two of them is completely believable. We understand the child's repeated choices to stay with Butch, and the reasons go far beyond the superficial need for a father (his is gone), and into the realm of love. It is from Haynes that he learns the lesson that exacts the price of Haynes' escape, but then it is his love for Haynes that makes it bearable, and even right, for both of them, as in the end, he becomes the protector--the man--whose job it is to help a loved-one who can no longer help himself.

When a film's characters are torn apart by the end of a film, its viewers should be, too, and we definitely are. It is a difficult, heart-breaking journey that Clint Eastwood insists we take with him, but taking it brings us to the point where we should start each day: from scratch. Red's last line is, "I don't know a da*n thing anymore," and that is exactly the point and the purpose of this story. We should never, ever think we have all the answers; to do so is fatal, as Red learns. Every day we should be willing to examine our beliefs and look back, with honesty, at what we've done, and look forward to what we're about to do with eyes wide open and with some sort of awareness of potential damage, and know, always, that there is no good "us," no bad "them," but that we're all only human beings, deeply flawed and yet filled with the capacity for love and connection, each of us doing the best we can.

Costner rediscovers his touch after 'Dances with Wolves'
There is something uncommon about this movie. It is hard to put my finger on. Parts of it are very touching. Parts of it are sad. I agree with the previous reviewer that Kevin Costner gives one of the best performances of his career in this movie. You find yourself thinking that even though his character Butch does bad things, he is not really a bad person, but you can't really be sure, because he is pretty complex. I think the little boy saves him from being a bad person, or at least shows that he is definitely not all bad. In the end, it is like Laura Dern says - "In a perfect world, this wouldn't happen." I find myself watching this movie whenever I come across it, and would definitely recommend it.