Here's what you need to know about Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World: everything after the scene where Kevin Costner gets shot in the belly drags interminably. The film also comfortably checks off a lot of entries off the melodramatic checklist you’d expect from a Hollywood treatment of this material. But in the spaces between those beats is a movie as rich and true and honest as anything to come out of Hollywood in its era. Some of my favorite scenes: Costner assuring the boy that he's got a "perfectly fine size for his age"; the cornfield killing; Costner giving the boy his first "roller coaster" ride; and my favorite--Costner, the boy, and a certain mother and daughter waltzing to an old record. These were all scenes that made me thrilled to be alive and watching a great piece of filmmaking. There's just enough of the meandering 90s indie spirit in it to keep it from becoming bloated and trite.
8/10
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