7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.4 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 3.4 |
A hardened prison escapee is on the lam with a young hostage and is followed by a Texas Ranger leading deputies and a criminologist on a statewide pursuit.
Starring: Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Laura Dern, T.J. Lowther, Keith SzarabajkaDrama | 100% |
Period | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish=both Latin and Castillian
English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German SDH, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian SDH, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
It's hard to remember now, but for the first two decades of his directing career, Clint Eastwood was rarely taken seriously as a filmmaker. The Man with No Name and Dirty Harry had made him a screen icon, and Sergio Leone and Don Siegel—who'd directed the creation of those characters and who Eastwood has often acknowledged—taught him how to construct images and narrative. Beginning with Play Misty for Me in 1971 (a film he did for free just to get the chance to direct), Eastwood showcased himself in various familiar genres: westerns (High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider), thrillers (The Eiger Sanction, The Gauntlet, the Dirty Harry sequel Sudden Impact) and military stories (Firefox, Heartbreak Ridge). He even made a few films that didn't fit any mold (Bronco Billy, Honkytonk Man), but throughout these efforts the appeal remained consistent. When people bought tickets, it was to see Eastwood the star, not Eastwood the director. Then came Bird, the 1988 biopic of jazzman Charlie Parker, starring future Oscar winner Forest Whitaker in a soulful and tragic performance as the self-destructive sax player. The film was a passion project for Eastwood, and he did not appear in it. Critics and audiences were equally nonplussed. Did the man with no name and a magnum really expect to be taken seriously behind the camera? (In fact, yes. Bird holds up well.) Reaction was no more favorable to the director's next effort, 1990's White Hunter Black Heart, in which Eastwood played a John Huston-like director making a film much like The African Queen. The film didn't work then and still doesn't. Not only is it too much of an insider's tale, but Eastwood also made one of his rare casting mistakes by giving himself the Huston role. (Wild eccentricity is not his strong suit.) With the advantage of hindsight, it's easy to see now that both Bird and White Hunter Black Heart marked the beginning of the restless experimentation that has characterized Eastwood's work ever since. The only certainty about a new Eastwood film is that it will be unlike the last one and probably unlike any before it (which is the most charitable way of explaining Eastwood's other 1990 release, the stuntman extravaganza, The Rookie). Not until 1992's Unforgiven did public perception catch up with Eastwood's artistic progress, aided no doubt by the film's deceptively familiar Western packaging. The following year, Eastwood officially attained the exalted position he has occupied for the two decades since with the receipt of Oscars for directing and producing Unforgiven. By then, however, the newly acknowledged auteur was deep into preparation for his next film, A Perfect World, in which Eastwood initially planned not to appear but eventually took a supporting role at the urging of star Kevin Costner. One of the intriguing ironies of Eastwood's career is that, even as he was being celebrated for the moral complexities of Unforgiven, he was already in the process of surpassing it with what appears, at first glance, to be a simple tale about an escaped convict.
A Perfect World was shot by Jack N. Green, who had been Eastwood's cinematographer since Heartbreak Ridge and would continue with him through Space Cowboys. Having graced Unforgiven with a rich, romantic glow that contrasted starkly with the ugly deeds of its characters, Green here created a flat, dusty look that captured the sparsely populated landscape of West Texas. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is another in its series of solid catalogue releases featuring decent blacks, balanced colors, detailed imagery and appropriate contrast levels. Fine, natural film grain is evident throughout the image, and there are no signs of inappropriate digital tampering by way of high frequency filtering, artificial sharpening or other such manipulation. Compression artifacts were not an issue.
The credits indicate that A Perfect World was released in Dolby Surround. Discrete 5.1 formats were in the early phase of theatrical adoption in 1993, and sound designers were just beginning to explore their potential. Still, the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track on Warner's Blu-ray makes interesting use of the surround field at various points, most noticeably for the sounds of nature, such as bird calls and insect noises, when characters are out in the country and peacefully on their own to reflect and talk to each other. A few brief sequences of vehicular mayhem have enough impact to register but are tame by action movie standards. Dialogue is the most critical element of the soundtrack, and that is always clear. The gently pastoral and occasionally elegiac score by Lennie Niehaus, who was Eastwood's composer of choice before he began writing his own film music, is well represented.
References to President Kennedy and an upcoming trip to Dallas prompted some viewers to conclude that A Perfect World is set in 1963, but as others have noted, Texas gubernatorial elections are held in even-numbered years. Still, the Governor (Dennis Letts) appears in one scene addressing the press, and he bears an unmistakable resemblance to John Connally, the Texas governor who was seriously wounded in Dallas by the gunfire that claimed President Kennedy's life. Regardless of the year, Eastwood makes a point of letting us know that A Perfect World is set before the watershed moment that shook America's self-confidence to the core and from which it has arguably never recovered. "I was different. The whole damn country was different!" says Frank Horrigan, the guilt-ridden Secret Service agent that Eastwood portrayed in In the Line of Fire immediately before filming A Perfect World. One of the subtle ironies of this quiet masterwork is to reveal layer upon layer of moral ambiguity in a world that, for many of its inhabitants, felt orderly and certain but would shortly be rocked in ways that even the haunted eyes of Chief Red Garnett could barely imagine. Highly recommended.
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