But it’s soon clear that it’s not breakfast he’s after. “I take (my eggs) over easy,” he says to Philips Mom. While he’s scouting the neighborhood Pugh breaks in on Philip and his mother. They need to ditch the car and get a new one. Butch and Pugh drive up, sans the prison guard. The sun isn’t even up yet but Mom is ready to make her kids breakfast. They sneak up on him, take his gun, hide in the back seat of his car and hold him at gunpoint as he drives out of the penitentiary parking lot.Ī short while later Philip’s Mom wakes him up. Haynes times the escape so that it coincides with one of the guards ending his shift. Once we get out we go our separate ways.” “Get this straight,” Butch tells him before they escape. The kind of person that belongs in the hooskow. Pugh on the other hand is a mean, hateful, stupid piece of white trash. Butch may be a convict but he’s charming, polite and at least outwardly doesn’t look like a criminal. Butch makes it clear that he doesn’t like Pugh and it’s not hard to see why. They’re Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabakla, best known for a supporting role on The Equalizer TV-show) and the before mentioned Butch Haynes. Later that night two inmates at a nearby penitentiary break out of jail by escaping through the air ducts. She’s clearly a good mother and is doing what she genuinely believes is best for her children. They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses and their Mother (Jennifer Griffin) won’t allow it. The movie begins in a suburb of Huntsville, Texas. Still, Costner was persuasive and Eastwood took on the role of Garrett. He clearly was attracted to the idea of making a fairly small, intimet film about regular people. Costner had just run something of a cinematic decathlon, having won a Best Director Oscar of his own for Dances with Wolves and subsequently carrying the films Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK and The Bodyguard. Costner could no doubt sympathize with Eastwoods fatigue. He would end up winning the second award. Actually two of them, one for acting and one for directing. He had just wrapped In The Line of Fire and directed Unforgiven, the western that finally earned him an Oscar nomination. Eastwood wasn’t keen on getting back in front of the camera. At first Eastwood only wanted to direct the film but when he gave Kevin Costner a copy of the script by John Lee Handcock, the Field of Dreams star convinced Eastwood that he should also play the role of “Red” Garrett, the Texas Ranger charged with bringing Hayes to justice. “I’d pick you any day of the week.” And he most certainly means it.Ī Perfect World is one of many cinematic gems directed by that icon of Hollywood icons, Clint Eastwood. “If I had to pick between riding with you or him,” Butch tells Philip regarding the deceased. Philip just saw (well, heard) Butch shoot someone, albeit someone bad. Not that it isn’t justifiable questions under the circumstances. Fact is, the boy asks the question not with a feeling of impending doom but rather as a little boy asking his father for assurance. “No, me and you are friends,” says Robert “Butch” Haynes (Kevin Costner), an escaped convict who has taken Philip (T.J. The film quality is good, but in A PERFECT WORLD, good cinematography helps very little.“Are you going to shoot me?” Unless you’re an actor or a kid playing cops and robbers, that’s a question that no one should ever have to ask with any sincerity. The story itself is depressing and morally empty, and that is exactly how viewers will feel after watching this film. His character is not particularly interesting and his performance is dull. A father-son relationship? I think not!Įastwood contributes very little to the film while on screen. He is a criminal, and his influence on Phillip is despicable as he teaches him how to steal, kill and rebel against his religious training. However, the film misses badly in its attempt to draw sympathy for Butch. The film goes downhill from here, taking a psychological look at relationships and attempting to show similarities between Butch and his young hostage–both suffering from the ill-effects of life without a father. Butch and a convict partner break out of Huntsville prison in 1963 Texas, steal a car and take a seven-year-old boy hostage. Laura Dern is a fairly useless rookie criminologist along for the ride. Kevin Costner plays escaped convict Butch Haynes, and Clint Eastwood, as Texas Ranger Red Garnett, is assigned to bring him in. Audiences expecting an action-packed/lawman-gets-his-man/adventure from the first Costner & Eastwood pairing will be greatly disappointed with the depressing and morally imperfect film A PERFECT WORLD.
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