Sunday Best: Top Ten Kevin Costner Movies

 Last week, my wife and I took time on Sunday to do a double feature of Kevin Costner movies that she had never seen.  It was at the moment I reflected on how many good movies the actor has been in.  

There are many people who criticize Costner's acting as slightly wooden.  Even if it is, it makes his several-decades-long career all the more remarkable.  I don't see it so much as wooden as Costner using his natural vocal and physical qualities and adapting them to his own.  His not a chameleon like Gary Oldman or Johnny Depp.  But he takes a classic Hollywood style like John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart, who adapt the role as their own.

And while I haven't seen all of his movies, I thought it would be fun to reflect on the best movies of his career.

While some of these movies have him playing a supporting role, I left out movies like Man of Steel, where he has very little screen time and so would not be considered a "Kevin Costner" movie.

Here are the Top 10:

10.  Hidden Figures

This movie has Costner in an important supporting role.  Over the years, he has eased into the part of the elder statesman on the movie set.  Here he plays Al Harrison, who is in charge of John Glenn's historic flight.  He does a great job of showing his awaking to the racial injustices around him while always expecting absolute excellence from the people under his command.  The movie is a testament to the moral strength of our country and its constant growth towards justice.

9.  Silverado

This movie was one where Costner had not truly achieved leading man status.  Instead he plays a quirky, edgy, and sometimes silly gunfighter.  It is unlike anything I've seen Costner do.  But he plays the part well.  The entire film is a well-acted and directed western that is incredibly satisfying to watch, even all of these years later.

8.  Bull Durham

Normally, the vulgarity and sexual content would rank this much lower.  But one thing this movie gets right is that beneath all of that, you have real characters and actors doing real performances.  Costner plays "Crash" Davis, a baseball player who is aging out of the game who as to train and up-and-coming pitcher to achieve the life that he never will.  Costner plays Crash with both a cynical edge and a beating heart.  

7.  Thirteen Days

People often make fun of Costner's accents.  The Boston one he uses in this movie is probably his most ridiculed.  But the movie is fantastic.  As with JFK, I do not want to get into its historical accuracy.  But Costner plays his Kenny O'Connell is a man who has to be incredibly cool under the pressure off the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The entire movie is a pressure cooker waiting to explode, but you know if it does, then tragedy will ensue.  The film makes historical events feel like an edge-of-your-seat thriller.

6.  No Way Out

Like Bull Durham, I'm not a fan of the sexual content.  But this is one of my favorite movie thrillers.  Costner plays a Navy Commander who is caught up in an affair-turned-deadly involving Gene Hackman's Secretary of Defense.  You can feel the noose tightening around Costner's character as powerful people try to trap him and he only has his wits to keep him one step ahead.  What is fantastic too is that when you see the movie again, you can see the different layers to his performance that you did not catch before.

5. Dances With Wolves

I just rewatched this movie and it is much better than I remember.  Perhaps I saw it too young to truly appreciate the scope and grandeur of it.  This might his most celebrated film and it earned him an Oscar for Best Director.  Not only is the movie gorgeous to look at, but it is also incredibly complicated.  This could have easily devolved into a simple narrative of the evil Americans oppressing others.  And to be sure, Costner was not shy about showing the horrors of those atrocities.  But he allows for complexity on all sides.  The movie respects you enough to let you see the humanity in both sides and make your own judgments of their actions.  

4. JFK

I remember seeing this multiple times in the theater.  I think it was because there was just too much to take in.  Oliver Stone's insane conspiracy vision come to life is almost hypnotic in the way it uses such incredibly dramatic lighting and disorienting edits.  You feel like you are caught in a storm of lies and corruption with Costner's William Garrison acting as the one honest man trying to make it to solid ground.  Again, I am not judging the movie on its historical claims (there are so many inaccuracies that I wouldn't know where to begin), but the movie itself is a fantastic piece of filmmaking and I think it is Oliver Stone's best movie, thus making it one of Costner's best.

3. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

This movie is pure adventure and fun.  Yes, there are some dark and disturbing moments.  But the entire film fills you with a classic sense of excitement that only the best movies can.  Ignoring his intermittent accent, Costner's Robin Hood actually goes on an incredibly interesting hero arc, where the suffering he experienced in the Crusades forges him into a better hero.  Kevin Reynolds direction is always dynamic and visually enjoyable.  He can take a simple moment like lowering a character out of a tree and turn into a shot of beautiful romantic feeling.  That, along with a great ensemble cast and terrific score, make this a film that I could go back to over and over again.

2. Field of Dreams

This movie is magic.  And I mean that not just in terms of the content where the ghosts of baseball players come to enjoy the game in a field in Iowa.  The script is magic.  It casts a spell on you.  Costner's Ray Kinsella is placed on a mystical quest whose ultimate questions are never answered.  What is causing this miraculous power?  Why are the rules the way they are?  What exactly happens when you go into the corn field?  These questions are never answered.  The magic is that they don't have to be.  The movie asks you to receive it less with your mind and more with your heart.  Normally, I don't like these kinds of films that are sentiment over substance.  But that is not the case with Field of Dreams.  The story knows what it is doing and writes characters with amazing intelligence.  Instead, it trusts in the power of the movie's heart to give you a cathartic experience.  I don't know anyone who doesn't get horribly emotional at line near the end of the movie: "Wanna have a catch?"  Because the heart is satisfied, no questions linger.

1.  The Untouchables

Kevin Costner's Elliot Ness is one of my favorite performances of his.  He is a man who wants to fight crime with clean heart but dirty hands.  The movie is phenomenal and I think it should get way more respect as the classic that it is.  It is Brian DePalma's best movie with a crackling script from David Mamet, along with an amazing score by Ennio Morricone.  You add other fantastic performances by Sean Connery (for which he one an Oscar), Robert DeNiro, and others, you get a movie that fires on all cylinders.  The movie fills you with the thrill of fighting the good fight only to be torn down by the horrible corruption of the world.  And it repeats this cycle over and over again so that (even though the conclusion is well-known) it leaves you guessing.  It gives you just enough hope without ever blinking away from the evils of the world.  

Honorable mentions:

The War

Waterworld

Message in a Bottle

For Love of the Game

The Highwaymen

Thoughts?