A Perfect World

A Perfect World (1993) is about a man escaping prison and the eight year old boy he takes with him. Butch Haynes gets out with two other convicts. They take hostages in a house and the boy ends up with them. Soon Butch rids himself of the other man and it is the two of them on the road. It begins as an escape story and turns into a story about a father and a son. Phillip has been raised inside a strict religious order; he has never celebrated Halloween, never been to a fairground. Butch tries to give him those things. Some of what the man teaches the boy is good and some of it is terrible. On the second track a Texas Ranger is chasing him, played by Clint Eastwood, who also directs. He reads Butch's childhood file and realises a decision he made about him years ago has determined the present. It is counted as Kevin Costner's best work. He does not play the character as likeable; the man is genuinely dangerous and the film never lets you forget it. Eastwood named it among his own favourites of his films. It failed commercially in America and was better received in Europe. The ending is long and painful; the sense of inevitability is set up from the start. It runs 138 minutes. Good for: road films, character drama, and Eastwood. Less good for: the pace is slow, a child is in danger, and the ending is heavy.