Star: Kevin Costner

The Bodyguard (1992) – Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston

The Bodyguard (1992) stars Kevin Costner (from Waterworld) as an ex secret service bodyguard called Frank Farmer who has previously protected multiple presidents before leaving to earn more money in the private sector protecting celebrities. This movie begins with him being convinced to take on the job of protecting a bit of a diva – a famous singer & actress called Rachel Marron in this movie, who is actually played by the real Whitney Houston, in her late 20s here – this was her first movie and was a massive box office success.

The soundtrack album to this movie was an even bigger success – to this day it remains the best-selling movie soundtrack album of all time, as well as the best-selling album by any female ever (according to Wikipedia, which doesn’t cover undisclosed history & territories).

Whitney’s character is initially quite reckless, as are most of her team, while Kevin’s character is trying to organise security in a necessarily pedantic manner. So initially they don’t click, but they eventually come to appreciate each other and become romantically involved. This is well timed, since there’s a very real threat to the celebrity’s life in the form of a clever & careful stalker.

I rate this movie as OK. It’s quite fun and captivating if you’ve not seen it before and are a fan of the lead cast members as well as the core concept and genre of this movie. Execution is a bit old-fashioned – it’s a bit of an old drama, and it goes on for 2 hours, but is generally well made, and there’s still a healthy dose of intermittent action in it.

Before knowing it was Whitney playing the lead female in this movie, I was thinking she has a confident sleepy-smokey eyed gaze very similar to Zhilei Zhang’s boxing trainer, Shaun George. They have very similar eyes.

The suspiciously similar deaths of Whitney and her only child

Sadly, Whitney died in her bathtub in 2012, aged only 48. Allegedly due to accidental downing, with cocaine a contributing factor. Her only child, Bobbi Kristina Brown, also died in a bathtub, just 3 years later, in 2015, aged only 22, allegedly due to cocaine and alcohol. Nick Gordon, Whitney’s adopted son, and eventual boyfriend of Bobbi, was held liable for Bobbi’s death in 2017, then died of a heroine overdose himself in 2020, aged 30.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) – Chris Pine

Chris Pine (from Wonder Woman) stars as Jack Ryan – the lead character in this movie. He does a good job of it too.

Supporting cast members include Kevin Costner (from Waterworld) as his recruiter from the CIA, and Keira Knightley as his fiancée who discovers his line of work and ends up helping him out on a dangerous mission. Kevin does a good job, and Keira is alright. Kenneth Branagh plays the chief villain quite well too.

The premise of this movie is pushing lies from the outset – what do you expect from Hollywood? But the action and plot are still fairly captivating.

There’s an unhealthy dose of drama in the first 25 minutes. Impressionable people will end up thinking that rowing and launching insults at your partner is a way to make them treat you better. Treat them mean, keep them keen? Not for me thanks.

There’s also a bit of drug glorification in this movie, which features the consumption of illicit pills and injectables followed by depictions of feeling good. To say I’m not impressed would be an understatement.

Half way in, the action gets a bit tense & gritty for about 15 minutes. It becomes very tempting to fast forward if you’ve seen this movie before. This part may be important to the plot, but it could have been condensed for smoother viewing, especially for rewatchers. A bit later, we have a similar problem although the tense gritty drama is then mixed in with a car chase so the tempo is constantly undulating – I personally find this quite irritating. The ending is a lot smoother though, when the focus turns back to America, while still carrying a good pace, but trumpeting the same kind of nonsense as we started out with. I reckon this movie was made as a recruitment drive, encouraging simple-minded highly-strung patriotic yes-men to join law enforcement agencies. It’s like a cross between Mission Impossible and NCIS.

Overall I rate Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) as just OK. If the grittier bits were better condensed and the cooler bits were more omnipresent, it could easily be a Decent or even Pretty Good movie, but as it stands, I rate it just OK.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) – Kevin Costner

Guess what – Hollywood’s at it again! The far-right anti-Islamic opening to this movie, has some good action, it’s just a shame it’s tarred with encouraging such a sentiment in its impressionable action-loving audience. Fortunately, it soon shows things from another view point, so it’s not all bad.

Morgan Freedom does a decent job as the imprisoned warrior Arab freed by Robin Hood who himself is played quite well by Kevin Costner (of Waterworld) as he makes his own escape from foreign lands after being held captive there for 5 years. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio does well as Lady Marian. And Alan Rickman performs very convincingly as the main antagonist – Sheriff of Nottingham – he’s a very snidey, ruthless, unpleasant character but that’s exactly what his role is meant to be, so he does a great job in that respect. I dare say he must be drawing parallels from his real-life persona in order to perform so convincingly – that’s probably the biggest backhanded compliment I’ve ever dished out, but it’s so true. We’re also treated to a decent minor role by Christian Slater as a young man of the woods. Nick Brimble did alright as Little John, ‘best man of the woods’. And Michael Wincott does a great job as Guy of Gisbourne – the main baddie early on, who gets killed by his cousin, the Sheriff of Nottingham, for failing to quell the trouble from Robin Hood so many times already.

There’s a fair amount of cool action and worthwhile drama in this movie, but much of the action and drama is also distressing – unpleasant to watch, for those who prefer smooth action hero movies without the grit & gristle.

Also, why depict the Celts as savage barbarians? Celtic people are the indigenous people of the UK, driven to the mountainous areas of Wales, Scotland and Ireland by the invaders & oppressors of years gone by. They’re warriors but they’re also general friendly, nature-respecting people. Again, it’s just Hollywood spreading racial & cultural disrespect as usual.

Overall I rate this movie as Decent considering how strong a movie it is with all its cast members, props, plot and script attributes. I must confess to skipping forward a few times during the less pleasant scenes, especially since I’ve seen this movie so many times before. If it were a bit more condensed around the more boring and agitating bits, and went to town a bit more with its existing creativity and props during the action scenes, and made better use of all its superstar actors, it could have been a much better movie for my taste, but as it stands, it’s just Decent – a level better than OK – a couple levels better than barely Watchable. Not quite on a par with the thoroughly captivating movies I’ve rated Pretty Good, and a couple levels down from the Very Good movies reviewed on this site thus far.

The ending was pretty good too – quite fitting for a movie rated higher than just OK. It had a good build up and sustained its levels of energy and creativity for a good half hour, and it ultimately ended with everything working out just fine. We were even treated to a short scene of Sean Connery playing the returning King Richard, at the very end. Perhaps his convincing brief performance in his role here inspired the somewhat similar movie First Knight (1995) where he played King Arthur and had plenty of screen time doing it.

It’s not Kevin Costner’s best action movie – I rated Waterworld a level higher than this one. But it’s up there – Robin Hood is probably his second best movie to my taste, just ahead of The Bodyguard (co-starring Whitney Houston).

Waterworld (1995) – Kevin Costner

Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner

Waterworld is a post-apocalyptic Max Mad style movie, except everyone lives on boats & rigging above water, because the whole world is flooded.

Kevin Costner stars in this epic legendary movie and does a very good job of it.

The script is fluid – the action stays busy – the plot stays interesting – the acting & cinematography are on point.

Being a high budget movie with elaborate props, it cost $172 million to make, when only $100 million was initially budgeted. It cost a lot more and took a lot longer to make than originally expected, due to under-estimating the difficulty of filming on water (it was practically all filmed in Kawaihae Harbor, in Hawaii). Unexpected difficulties included the need to take more safety precautions (accidents happened), and the need to postpone filming on bad weather days. Many people were sacked following this apparent disaster, although with high income from the foreign box office the movie did make a small profit in the end, and more importantly to some people, we ended up with an epic movie to enjoy for decades thereafter.

I rate this movie as Pretty Good alongside Hackers which also came out in the summer of 1995 but cost barely a tenth of what Waterworld cost to produce. Still, as much as it was hailed a disaster for massively over-running its budget, Waterworld still eventually turned a profit while Hackers was commercially a flop. Anyway, I rate them both a tad better than Christopher Lambert’s cool movie The Hunted (1995); also a tad better than Steven Seagal’s best movies like Under Siege (1992) and The Glimmer Man (1996); but a tad inferior to The Quest (1996) for my taste – co starring Roger Moore, that was one of Van Damme’s best movies after Bloodsport – and I may be a bit biased as a martial artist favouring the martial arts movie (if I were a sailor maybe I’d put Waterworld right up there with the best movies ever made).

Kevin Costner in Waterworld (1995)