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A Perfect World (1993)
In A Perfect World, Clint Eastwood isn't the confident, hard-nosed, right-wing crime-fighter we saw in the 1970s and 80s, neither as a director nor as an actor. Instead, he presents a slow-moving, moody piece set in the American South during the 1960, in which an escaped convict (Kevin Costner) takes a fatherless 8-year-old boy (T. J. Lowther) hostage and embarks on an adventurous, congenial car getaway with him, tailed by a handful of fairly ineffective, machismo-driven law enforcers. The film's strength lies in the developing relationship between Costner's likeable character, who constantly balances on the edge of goodness and morality, and the receptive child. The recurring theme is innocence and romanticism, both society's and the individual's. And the interpersonal predicament is this: How can the Costner character enable the boy to expect and achieve more from life than he did himself without corrupting him with his behaviour? Costner's entire future is put on hold when he recognises his own spitting image in this child, and the boy, who desperately wants the world to be good, clings to his captor's positive sides (of which there are quite a few) like any naïve, under-stimulated child would. This relationship covers remarkable emotional depth, and the performances from Costner and young Lowther are superb. There's no doubt Eastwood has very warm feelings about the 1960s, despite its primitive crime-fighting methods and the large generation gaps that created plenty of social voids in a society in the midst of modernisation. His rendition of the period in question is attractive, if not exactly rosy red. And if he offers no solutions, at least he offers plenty of warmth, hope and – unavoidably – grief.
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