![]() ![]() Phillip can hardly help but begin to see in Butch the father he doesn’t have. Even so, it was not heavy enough, as the scenes among the cops prove uniquely uneventful impediments to forward progress.Īfter a nervous gas station interlude in which Butch disposes of the menacing Terry, little Phillip begins admiring his abductor for his cool, manly, take-charge ways and his friendly, liberating words of encouragement, things he never hears from his severe, Jehovah’s Witness mom. Remainder of the picture cross-cuts between the hunters and the prey, with heavy emphasis on the latter. Faintly amusing touch has the law gang traveling in a silver mobile trailer loaded with high-tech gizmos with which they hope to track Butch’s movements. Quickly taking up the chase is Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Eastwood), a seasoned, instinctive pro who gets saddled with an unwanted contingent of man hunters, including Laura Dern’s state criminologist and Bradley Whitford’s odious sharpshooter. With a nod to “Escape From Alcatraz,” Butch and his nasty partner Terry (Keith Szarabajka) break out of the joint on Halloween night in 1963, commandeer a car and, after briefly terrorizing a family, make off with 7 -year-old Phillip Perry (T.J. This is a disturbing, intimate, noirish road movie paradoxically lensed in widescreen across the vast, sunbaked Texas landscape, its impact made through oblique dialogue and the finesse of performance rather than by broad action and suspense.įramed by haunting images of its sweaty protagonist lying in the grass as money stirred up by helicopter blades wafts over him, John Lee Hancock’s story centers on Butch Haynes (Costner), a lifelong loser toughened up by many years in the pen. In his directorial follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Unforgiven,” Eastwood once again touches upon certain subjects he has been drawn to in the past, such as ruptured families, bereft children, loner outlaws pushed to the brink, and working people in rural America.
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