Once upon a time, Kevin Costner was a movie star. Was he ever a great actor? Well, no. But he did exude a screen star presence, and his career had legs. He was Eliot Ness in THE UNTOUCHABLES and Jim Garrison in JFK. He played Wyatt Earp and Robin Hood, and was Whitney Houston’s love interest in THE BODYGUARD. He was toplined in BULL DURHAM and FIELD OF DREAMS, two of the best of the modern-era baseball films. He even won an Academy Award, not for his acting but for directing DANCES WITH WOLVES.
Well, back in January, Kevin Costner turned sixty and, in recent years, leading roles in high-profile movies have pretty much disappeared for him. A couple decades ago, he surely would have been cast in the title role in JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, which was released last year. However, this time around, the Tom Clancy hero, who previously was played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck, is younger-- and is fashioned to appeal to a younger demographic. This Jack Ryan is an economics student-turned-U.S. Marine-turned CIA operative. And so Chris Pine, who is in his early thirties, plays Ryan and gets to romance Keira Knightley. Costner appears in support, as a veteran CIA higher-up.
The bottom line here is that Kevin Costner no longer is the star that he once was. But what he has morphed into is a fine actor. As proof, check out his performances in two of this year’s releases: BLACK OR WHITE and MCFARLAND, USA. In BLACK OR WHITE, Costner plays a widower who gets swept up in a custody battle over his biracial granddaughter. MCFARLAND, USA has him cast as the teacher rather than the ballplayer: a high school coach who impacts the lives of his Latino charges in an impoverished California town.
Both films are well-intentioned with regard to the issue of race relations, but both are flawed. In its worst moments, BLACK OR WHITE deals in broad stereotypes and is downright cartoonish, and MCFARLAND, USA is by-the-numbers predictable. But both feature fine Kevin Costner performances: performances that are thoughtful, heartfelt, and a pleasure to watch. They are, indeed, among the best of his career.
For a range of reasons, whether because of advancing age, changing audience tastes, or poor career choices, celluloid stardom can fade. But careers do not have to end. In the late 1970s, for example, John Travolta was front page news after dazzling audiences in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE. But he or his handlers made some unfortunate career decisions and, by the early 1990s, his films were instantly forgettable-- and some even were of the direct-to-home-video variety. Perhaps Travolta might have left the business but, then, Quentin Tarantino cast him in PULP FICTION and his career was resurrected.
In an earlier era, Dick Powell won fame playing male ingénues in 1930s Warner Bros. musicals. By the 1940s, he simply was too old to be cast as juveniles. So what did he do? Well, he thrust aside his singing voice and reinvented himself playing world-weary gumshoes and war veterans in a series of mysteries and film noirs. You can watch Powell playing likable crooners in 42ND STREET, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, and FOOTLIGHT PARADE, and you can watch him playing Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s cynical gumshoe, in MURDER, MY SWEET, one of the great film noirs-- and it is as if you are seeing two completely different actors. Indeed, Dick Powell was a smart industry professional. In the 1950s, he also began producing and directing both for the movies and television.
At this juncture in his career, Kevin Costner is playing the coach, the mentor, the grandfather, rather than the all-American hero/love interest. His characters no longer are what I once referred to in a Costner career analysis as “generic Hollywood good guys who remain uncorrupted as they take on the scenario’s villains” or “boyish and stable leads” in “the Frank Capra-Jimmy Stewart tradition.” In BLACK OR WHITE and MCFARLAND, USA, his characters are perfectly suited to an actor who is, chronologically-speaking, closer to Social Security than grad school. And what he now needs are some good scripts: those that match the quality of THE UNTOUCHABLES, BULL DURHAM, and FIELD OF DREAMS.
Rob Edelman teaches film history at the University at Albany. He has written several books on film and television, and is an associate editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide.
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