Kevin Costner

News, Reviews & Features

Review: The Highwaymen is your dad's new favourite film

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 11th April 2019

I was reading an article today about the cartel leader El Chapo, who is currently in prison for murder, drug trafficking and money laundering, among other things. So beloved is El Chapo, and so cherished his image by the common folk of Mexico, he's been able to launch a fashion line from his cell. It's a curious feature of the human brain that we allow ourselves to be attracted towards these dark figures, hailing them as heroes despite the devastation their crimes have caused. I guess all it takes is a media-friendly mugshot and enough degrees of separation to empathise with someone who would do you harm if you ever crossed them. Back at the start of our modern press age, Bonnie & Clyde were like a prototype of the El Chapo phenomenon; shown a dose of forgiveness due to the romanticism associated with their escapades. The reality was they were killers who needed to be stopped - an inevitability due to the attention they'd brought upon themselves - and the job fell to two middle-aged men, sent criss-crossing endless dusty roads in an olde timey car. But just because there's nothing sexy about that story, does it mean it shouldn't be told?

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Molly’s Game

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 4th November 2017

If it wasn’t immediately obvious from the impenetrable wall of dialogue that looms over the opening scene, Molly’s Game was written by famed fast-talker Aaron Sorkin. If it wasn’t immediately obvious he directed it too, the clues are there to be found: scenes that smash cut through shot lists like a machine gun play home to worldly and wise characters who spew dictionaries of insightful dialogue. Molly’s Game is adapted from the biography of a poker hostess who ran high stakes games for big game players, but the movie has more of Sorkin’s fingerprints on it than his own typewriter. Often if a writer-director can’t remove their own ego from the equation it can be problematic, but thankfully the story of Molly’s Game feels tailor-made for Sorkin’s style: though occasionally weighed down by sheer volume of dialogue, it’s nonetheless smart, slick and - thanks to a towering Jessica Chastain performance - more than a bit sexy.

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Criminal

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 12th April 2016

Everybody looks likes someone or something else in Criminal: Ryan Reynolds looks like a worried owl, Tommy Lee Jones looks like Maz Kanata and Kevin Costner is trying his best to channel Nicolas Cage. Even the film itself is trying to be a Bourne-style thriller, but instead is a weird mishmash of Self/Less and that episode of The Simpsons when Homer has a crayon stuck up his nose.

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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 20th January 2014

Jack Ryan is unique in reboot terms, in that you could hardly call him a franchise: with four actors playing a single role over five movies, it feels more like a Doctor Who-esque regeneration than an attempt to rebuild the character from scratch. Despite his myriad abilities, Jack Ryan is not the most adaptable of fellows: there are few drastic differences between Chris Pine's interpretation of the Tom Clancy hero and Ben Affleck's take in The Sum Of All Fears. When you consider just how much America has changed in the last 12 years, in terms of global perception, geo-politics and national security, Shadow Recruit has to go down as a missed opportunity. Apart from an early nod to the September 11th attacks, it could have been written in 2004, 1994 or even 1984. It feels intentionally bland; homogenised so it can play to any audience at any time. Except Russians, obviously.

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Films on TV round-up: merry men and Merry Christmas

TV Feature | Matt Looker | 8th January 2012

Here are your films for this week, the first selection of 2012! Wow, it's like we're in the future and, therefore, all these films represent the very best, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art examples of modern movie-making. Nah, not really - it's all old shit.

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