Directed by: Tom Shadyac
Starring: Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, Susanna Thompson
Oh boy, a Kevin Costner movie. Remind me again how this guy got to be a really big name? Because other than two or maybe three roles, I can’t remember him ever being any good at all. He’s like an old, tired Keanu Reeves.
In Dragonfly, Costner is a doctor who’s wife died in an accident while she was helping starving babies or something in South America. He keeps getting reminded of her by dragonflies and dragonfly paraphernalia, as that was her “totem” animal or something and she had a birthmark of one on her back. He starts talking to cancer kids who’ve had near-death experiences and who tell him that they’ve seen her and she wants him to go to a squiggly line. The twist ending is really the only interesting part of this film, so I won’t ruin it.
Dragonfly is constructed well, and competently directed (or even better than that, in some areas), and the premise works as a sort of low-key thriller. What just screws the whole thing up is, of course, Costner, who turns in a lethargic and very flat performance. Despite being haunted by his dead wife (basically), he never really seems to get out of the emotional range of very, very tired to slightly confused. Even in a sequence where a dead guy is talking to him through his dead wife’s voice, the most he can muster is to make his eyes wider while monotonously asking what’s going on. He really does ruin the film.
Films in Boxes 
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