At the outset of 1993, there wasn’t a more bankable movie star than Kevin Costner. Dating back to Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” in 1987, Costner had starred in at least one blockbuster every year. He possessed an earnestness and practical facility that recalled Gary Cooper, but he could place a sexy, ornery spin on the ball if need be (particularly as minor league catcher Crash Davis in Ron Shelton’s masterful “Bull Durham”). He was such a winning presence onscreen and as a Hollywood concept in general that his Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences peers enthusiastically declared his “Dances with Wolves” the Best Picture of 1990 over Martin Scorsese’s undeniable “Goodfellas.” He also snagged the Best Director trophy, which felt like a statement of principle from the Oscars: let’s make movies big and sweeping and morally upright again.
After the success of “The Bodyguard” in the fall of 1992, Costner had it all, and he’d attained it all by never straying too far from his wheelhouse. Hollywood and moviegoers knew what they wanted from Costner, and he seemed obliged to give it to them. It was right around this time that we learned his next movie would be Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World.” The Best Director of 1990 would be acting for the Best Director of 1992. Two American icons. Perfect, indeed.
Except Eastwood’s film isn’t about exceptionalism; it’s a melancholy road movie that deals in dark shades of gray. Costner stars as a killer who gradually gets back in touch with the humanity that was beaten out of him by either his father or prison. There’s something stunted and sad about his character, which was far enough afield from what he’d done before at the time that moviegoers stayed away. They didn’t like Costner the killer.
Costner was chastened in the moment, but once he passed the age of 50 he decided to check back in on his un-Cooper side. This wasn’t a bad impulse, but in one instance the material was horrifically unfit for him and the all-star cast that joined him in what is now a mercifully forgotten bomb of a film.
In 2016, Kevin Costner made a Criminal decision
In 2007, Kevin Costner starred in a serial killer thriller called “Mr. Brooks.” Written and directed by the “Stand by Me” scripting duo of Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, it’s a weirdly funny and compelling riff on a genre that’s been stuck in a hyper-conventional rut since Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” (Because film history likes to rhyme, that’s the movie that won Best Picture and Director in between “Dances with Wolves” and “Unforgiven.”) It was not wildly successful, but it did not flop.
Ariel Vroman’s “Criminal,” which grossed $38.8 million worldwide on a budget of $31.5 million, at the very least lost a chunk of money. Factor in some incredibly hostile reviews, and I think it qualifies as a flop. It stars Costner as a convict who, due to having a damaged frontal lobe, is deemed an ideal candidate to receive the highly valuable memories of a recently killed CIA agent (Ryan Reynolds). Written by “The Rock” team of Douglas Cook and David Weisberg, the plot is staggeringly implausible — which apparently tickled the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman, and Gal Gadot because they’re all in this ridiculous thing.
What in the heck possessed Costner to sign on to what wound up being such a reviled movie? He asked himself the same thing a few times before signing on. In a 2016 interview with The Toronto Sun, Costner admitted, “I turned it down two or three times. I said, ‘I don’t even know why you’d come after me for this.’ But, when I looked in the mirror, I thought, ‘You’re not in ‘Fandango’ anymore.’ When I looked at it, I thought, ‘I can play this guy. I can play this level of violence.'”
While Costner was amused by his “hamburger patty on the top” haircut (his worst ‘do since he misguidedly tried to pull off Steve McQueen’s Caesar in “The Bodyguard”), he probably should’ve listened to his gut the first, second, and perhaps third time it grumbled at him to steer clear of “Criminal.” But, again, no one remembers it, which makes it less of an embarrassment than “3000 Miles to Graceland.”
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