Avis Metacritic

This is a movie that surprises you. The setup is such familiar material that you think the story is going to be flat and fast. But the screenplay by John Lee Hancock goes deep. And the direction by Clint Eastwood finds strange, quiet moments of perfect truth in the story.

A deeply felt, deceptively simple film that marks the high point of Mr. Eastwood's directing career thus far.

Eastwood grabs the reins and draws Costner's scrappiest performance since Bull Durham. In going beyond chase-yarn duty, Eastwood and Costner do themselves proud.

It’s material primed for mushiness, yet Eastwood shrewdly marries sentimentality to both self-deprecating humor (including a late bullhorn gag) and darker, more desolate undercurrents.

Hancock lays the groundwork for Eastwood to transform what might have been an admirable, tightly told entertainment into something far more emotionally resonant, slyly self-aware, and rich in subtext.

Within its narrow, unambitious, commercial boundaries, the movie is highly watchable. Lowther is appealing, and Costner is a likable rebel.

Although the acting is of a high calibre as expected, the story disappoints with little character development or action.

The director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated - and the accent is on humour.

A rehash of plot conventions from a slew of mismatched movies. A Perfect World will remind you of any number of previous films, but almost everything it attempts to do was done better the last time around.

The trouble with Eastwood’s attempt to make a thriller with heart is that, in retreating from his darker impulses, he muffles his own voice as a moviemaker.