TIN CUP (74)

Directed by: Ron Shelton

Starring: Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson

The Pitch: A brilliant-but-ornery golfer sets out to win both the girl and the US Open from his smooth, corporate rival.

Theo Sez: Like the armadillo that wanders casually through its opening credits, this is a film to make you laugh without quite knowing why - some spirit of laid-back goofiness perhaps, or a wry acknowledgment that life doesn't always deal a very glamorous hand. The point is that, whatever one is dealt, it's all in the playing - which is also the case with the movie, Costner's fabulous performance a model of charm, effortless authority and sheer star presence. What he achieves - to make the movie his own, a star vehicle par excellence - is incredible, both because of his recent (dismal) form and because of the quality of the other players. This would probably be a good movie with anyone in the lead role - Shelton writes gloriously zesty and articulate dialogue, and has even blossomed as a stylist (viz. the small montage of jump-cuts announcing the heroine's true feelings beneath her cool exterior) - yet the star inhabits this character magisterially. It's among the best, most richly-detailed movie portraits of an Artist (albeit in the rugged, Hemingwayesque mould), refusing to betray his art by compromise even if it means damaging the bottom line - which, in this winner-takes-all sporting context, makes him a loser, never the most popular Hollywood movie hero. In reconciling those two opposites, fashioning a smart (if slightly too diffuse) romantic comedy and even contriving a big, bold, whoop-out-loud crowd-pleaser of a climax without ever losing or diluting the stubborn grittiness at its core, lies the film's greatest triumph.