But the world isn't a perfect place and the only things ever swept by Clint Eastwood's follow-up to "Unforgiven" are these futile academic observations... the underrated masterpiece flies higher than that. And I'm beginning to detect patterns within 'Eastwoodian' characters. Antihero is too formulaic a term to encapsulate the levels of human depth they usually reveal. To put it in less fancy words, there's the idea that doing something bad doesn't make you bad, while never doing anything wrong doesn't make you a saint either. Maybe it's all about trying to be better or make the world, a better, if not perfect, place.And this is sweetly captured by the relationship between Butch, wonderfully played by Kevin Costner, and Philip (T.J. Lowther), a 8-year old boy, raised by a devout Jehovah's Witness mother. Philip will find more exhilaration and freedom as a hostage he never truly was than as a child he never truly was either. Butch offers Philip the kind of childhood he was deprived from... partly because of the very man who chases him, Texas Ranger Red Garnett, played by Clint Eastwood. Once again, the veteran actor masters the art of silence that speaks volumes. And more powerfully than revelations or action, we know the man from his reactions toward his travelling companions, a young criminologist with a more modern approach (Laura Dern) and a detestable trigger-happy sharpshooter (Bradley Whitford). Red doesn't act much in this film, maybe because some actions he ended up regretting suddenly resurfaced. The wounds of the past are the point of convergence of these two narratives.And it's noteworthy that the film is set in Texas in 1963 and often alludes to Kennedy's upcoming visit and the election year. This contextualization brings an odd feeling of impending doom, that the future's uncertainty can be more difficult to handle than the past's definitiveness. For instance, when Butch and his mentally unstable cellmate (Keith Szarabajka) escape from jail, a man is killed in the process. Eastwood keeps it off-screen, it's unlikely that Butch is the killer, but we don't need the empathy to work so early.It's possible that Butch isn't the killing type but in Eastwood's universe, certainty is one luxury we can't afford. Sometimes, it takes a hostage taker to set you free or a criminal to straighten you out, but sometimes, you just can't tell. What we see though is that Phillip is a fatherless kid and Butch an adult whose abusive father made him took the wrong path. We can all agree that childhood can shape one man's future for better or worse. We can't change the past but maybe this capability to 'regret' is the box that contains the raw diamond of humanity. But once again with Clint Eastwood, you can't tell what might happen. Child abuse is perhaps the one crime that Butch can't tolerate and in a heartbreaking scene where he finds out his host slaps his kid and treats him like dirt, a button was pushed and then he takes a decision that totally derails the journey. Screenwriter John Lee Hancock never paints a black and white morality, it portrays humanity as a world made of intricate interactions, where we owe a little bit of ourselves to persons of various degrees of goodness... a well-intentioned law enforcer affects a kid's life negatively, a criminal allows a boy to grow up nicely."A Perfect World" is one of these films that seem so simple yet so affecting, it follows a straightforward narrative, an escape, a chase but then a series of unpredictable steps, some comedic, some dramatic, turn the experience to something extraordinarily truthful to life. It reminded me of a film like "The Defiant Ones" where two fugitives depended on the kindness or the selfishness of people who crossed their paths and ultimately became better persons. "A Perfect World" is a good experience in the sense that the people in this film try to act for the better, to be better, or just preventing the worse. It's interesting that the film started with Halloween. "Trick or treat?" ask the kids, as if they summarized in one simple sentence the idea that you either treat a kid well or end up regretting it. Philip wasn't mistreated by not being allowed to play with his friends, but Butch gave him a loophole to the world and allowed him to widen his scope and realize that the world didn't revolve around the austere teachings of his mother, and the belief in a perfect hereafter.Now I won't spoil the film but the last line is perhaps the truest that could be ever said: "I don't know". Who knows anyway? Some persons just don't know and only act according to what they think is the right thing, like Red did with Butch, like Philip's mother, like several characters in Eastwood movies. Some of them actually know they do the wrong things and get their comeuppance or at least, an ultimate warning, maybe they're the closest to 'villains' in Eastwood's movies.But "A Perfect World" is too deep for its own good, having been ignored by the awards, especially Kevin Costner who proves that when being given the perfect role, he can act his way out. It is certainly his most brilliant performance, elevating him to an almost-equal to Eastwood. I'm not kidding, these men love America and embody levels of goodness that transcend the ways of the law. Both are somewhat losers but like a poet like Huston would have painted them, which means that in a perfect world, they would be winners.And if there's anything we learn from Clint Eastwood is that the world isn't perfect, but as his friend Morgan Freeman would say, quoting the writer, it's still worth fighting for... who knows? Eastwood might be the Hemingway of American Cinema, the last Mohican of a dying breed of artists.

Kevin Costner is a pretty likable guy. Even when he's an escaped convict who kidnaps a child. While Perfect World isn't a comedy, it's hardly a drama either. Costner kidnaps T.J. Lowther, and practically from the get-go, they act like bosom buddies. Only once does this kid ask to be taken back to his family, which I found a little confusing. He's been kidnapped by a gun-waving convict, and he bonds to him as a father figure. But, since the boy's father isn't in the picture, I guess that might be the point of the movie.Clint Eastwood (who also directs) is the cutie-pie cop trailing Costner, and Laura Dern is absolutely adorable as the federal agent assigned to help him. Her Southern accent is very charming, and they make a very cute on screen couple, whether or not romance enters the plot.No one's character is really developed or explained. Costner is obviously a bad guy, but he fathers this kid for no reason. Despite teaching the boy to steal, con, lie, and run from the police, he's supposed to share a special "aw shucks" bond with him? The kid interrupts Costner when he's about to get lucky, but instead of shooing him away or yelling at him, he says goodbye to the woman, gets back in the car with the kid, and tells the impressionable boy that he was in love with the woman (a waitress he only knew for five minutes). Is he trying to teach the boy good or bad things? I wasn't really sure. All in all, it's a pretty predictable movie, but it's not a terrible one.

Nigh on a perfect film. In fact it is perfect and as an exercise in movie making, taking account of all aspects other than personal enjoyment quotient it ticks every box, unreservedly, and it was only a personal thing which lead me to initially give it a 9.3. But whatever, let's not get too precious about it. 10. Up there in the stellar regions of my ten films we can get really incremental, but I cannot think of a single factor, including personal enjoyment where it doesn't get top marks, as the more I have pondered it the more I realise the beauty of it all. It's a buddy movie twice, Clint Eastwood and Laura Dearn carrying the support act to Costner and T.J. Lowther's focal piece, there is a pleasant dressing of comedy, and in Costner's Butch a character of wide yet visible complexity who encapsulates the dilemma faced by social scientists across time and space since the get go, never mind a person's own demons. It's kind of better in that it is not a widely acclaimed film, it makes it more personal, and a film that grows with investment; for me it got better as it wore on, I really don't think there is anything not to love about it. If I were dishing the gongs out I wouldn't have given 1993's to Tom Hanks. And I truly dig Tom Hanks.

This film is one of those rare movies that manage to use the strengths of all involved. First, this is the very best of Clint Eastwood both as a director and actor. Eastwood the director learned his trade from Don Siegel, who made a bunch of no-nonsense 70's action films, many of them with Eastwood as the star. Eastwood learned his trade well from the master. He can edit the fat out of a film very effectively. Eastwood the actor really shines in this film as well in a supporting role as a Texas Ranger at the tail end of a career doing a kind of slow burn as events unfold around him.The story flow feels a little bit choppy, and not having watched other Eastwood-directed films, I'm not sure where the majority of the blame falls. The editing is simple and to the point, which occasionally makes shots feel too obvious, but again, after only one viewing, I don't have the problem completely pinpointed yet. The darkness brings the story to very believable light, but there are also some more complex relationships and themes in A Perfect World. Savannah Smiles is about two crooks changing their ways. This film is about fatherhood, or at least the fatherhood role. And in contrast to the film's title, fathers aren't always perfect. One thing, however, that this movie shouts perfectly clearly is a call to men: boys look to those around them for mentors. And even if you're a murdering, stealing, lying crook, there's quite likely some young boy who sees something you do, and thinks "I want to be like that." Overall rating: 8 out of 10.