David Mackenzie’s critically acclaimed Hell or High Water, a 2016 movie nominated for Best Picture, reminded me of a quiet and subdued gem of a 1993 film that undoubtedly inspired a director just starting to enter his prime. Clint Eastwood (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby) was fresh off of Unforgiven (a movie that earned him his first Best Director Oscar win as well as Best Picture of the Year) and the critically acclaimed and equally fan-adored In the Line of Fire. A Perfect World was Eastwood’s third movie between 1992 and 1993, the most successful two-year period of the most exceptional director/actor combination in cinema history.
Quiet, soft, and subdued, the public sought what Eastwood would direct following Unforgiven, the best western movie of its generation. He picked a Bonnie and Clyde caper-type story with the father-son elements of classics like Bicycle Thiefs, East of Eden, Shane, It’s a Wonderful Life, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Eastwood, A Perfect World’s lead (Kevin Costner) was arguably at the height of his career as well, having starred in Dances With Wolves, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, No Way Out, and The Untouchables in the six years prior. It was undoubtedly a 1993 Eastwood-directed/Costner-led movie that audiences were likely chomping at the bit for when they first saw the trailer. A Perfect World did not disappoint. Twenty-seven years later, it is even more iconic than when it was released.
Set in rural Texas on a Halloween night in 1963, Butch Haynes (Costner) and Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka – Argo, We Were Soldiers) have a heavily guarded correctional facility. Dangerous and now armed after stealing a guard’s car, the duo finds themselves in even more trouble than a prison escape when Terry kills the guard. Looking for a vehicle that local authorities won’t be searching for, the pair ends up at the home of a Jehovah’s Witness single mother and her three children. Thinking they need a hostage to help with their escape, Butch and Terry take hereight-year-old son Philip. Terry first tries to rape Phillip’s mother and later tries to molest the young boy. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Terry won’t be around for very long.
On the run, Butch and Phillip begin to bond. Rather than make this a movie about a chase of cops and robbers, it becomes a character study of a man and a young boy who realize their similarities far outweigh their differences. Eastwood exemplifies how a man who might do bad things isn’t necessarily evil. As we learn about each character’s backstory, we discover that is that each has an absentee father but that Butch, a hardened criminal himself, has sent him a postcard from Alaska. It is Butch’s ultimate goal to reunite with him. The way that Butch converses with him treats him to some of the simpler joys of life (RC Cola, trick or treating, driving a car), protects him, and, most importantly, how to defend himself.
Their run takes them through the Texas panhandle as they attempt to cross into Oklahoma. Hunting them down in the Texas Governor’s state-of-the-art RV are Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Eastwood), forensics expert Sally Gerber (Laura Dern – Marriage Story, Wild), and an FBI agent named Bobby Lee (Bradley Whitford – Get Out, Saving Mr. Banks). With its driver and a control center of fancy gadgets, the vehicle is high-tech but less adept in the physical chase of smaller sedans and pickup trucks. Butch always seems to be one step ahead of his captors. There is a story between Red and Butch that makes this a personal one for the ranger. He has been struggling to come to grips with it for many years. He was the man responsible for encouraging a job to unjustly sentence Butch to prison for a crime he committed. Red realizes that Butch didn’t deserve such a harsh punishment simply because Red was worried Butch would turn into a dangerous criminal like his father and that he would be doing society a favor in keeping him locked up before that could happen. It’s a decision that has haunted him for years and has the potential to impair his judgment now as he looks for atonement.
While not an action movie, there are enough close encounters and car chases to keep that audience base interested. But this is much more a character-driven drama that shows Costner’s underrated prowess as a leading man. With just one acting Oscar nomination (Dances With Wolves) to his credit despite forty years of diversified roles, A Perfect World may be the finest performance of his career. Butch goes from jovial to aggressive and from reflective to intense in the blink of an eye. We are aware that there is a carefree soul that aims to do the right thing, but a stifled one due to a much too-long prison sentence. His anger explodes when he sees harm done to innocent people, which makes it so ironic that he has kidnapped a young child. But I think he believes that Terry was more the kidnapper, and now that he has hurt the man who tried to hurt Phillip, he is now the young boy’s protector. I believe that Butch sees Phillip as the son that he was never able to have because he was sentenced to prison before he could begin that part of his life.
Butch reminds me of the Chris Pine character Toby in Hell or High Water. Situational factors cause him to break the law. But while doing so, he’s haunted between right and wrong and his impact on civilians’ lives. Like Buch, Toby gets to the point where he seeks to go out of his way to help strangers to compensate for the crimes he is committing. Like in A Perfect World, Toby and his much more rebellious and disturbed brother Tanner are on the run from a seasoned law enforcement official who is intent on bringing them down.
The Texas backgrounds serve as the perfect backdrops for lead characters who disrupt the simpler ways of living. Why not allow the largest contiguous state in the country by the stage? This allows the story to have an unlimited physical space that slowly lets us see that these lead characters are not confined by any rules outside the ones they govern. As a result, we have two movies that are free of boundaries, where everything seems believable, even when capture is inevitable. Suppose others could follow the blueprint of either of these movies before taking a tangent with their own creative spins. In that case, we’d continue producing taut, entertaining films with multi-dimensional characters struggling between right and wrong.
Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9.5/10
Directing 9.5/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
91.5%