Every Kevin Costner Movie Is A Western (Even When They’re Not)

Kevin Costner carries the American West with him wherever he goes. He has starred in only four Westerns—Silverado, Dances with Wolves, Wyatt Earp, and Open Range–but it seems like he has made a lot more. Maybe it’s because he directed two of those, or maybe it’s because he has two MORE of those coming out this summer: the first installments of his planned four-part franchise Horizon: An American Saga. Maybe it’s because has also gravitated towards Westerns on the small screen; in Hatfields & McCoys and four seasons of Yellowstone.

In between, he has made other films—not technically Westerns—in which he rides horses, battles evil sheriffs, uses a bow and arrow, and explores the liminal spaces between hero and outlaw, violence and justice, and civilization and wilderness. Some of these films are actually set in the American West; others simply embody the spirit of the range. Looking over his filmography, one thing becomes clear: even when Costner is not making a Western, he’s basically making a Western.

The trend should have been clear from the start.1985’s Silverado is widely thought of as Costner’s introduction to the moviegoing public, but he also starred that year in Fandango, a coming-of-age story about four college grads who take a wild road trip before two of them are required to report to Vietnam. Fandango is set mostly in the West Texas desert—probably not far from Roy McAvoy’s driving range in 1996’s Tin Cup—with Costner, as the charismatic Gardner Barnes, serving as the cowboy of the group. An early scene of him behind the wheel is taken from below, a hero shot invented for actors on horseback. More revealing is his character’s wild, uncivilized nature. He refuses romantic involvement and never sees himself settling down. “Gotta roam, gotta bird dog,” he says late in the film. “Gotta cross females and fences.” He’s a cowboy in all but name.

A few years later, Costner debuted as a director with the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves, and he used his newfound cachet to support two wild projects with Western overtones. Waterworld is a Western inverted. It’s a world of all water and no land, instead of the opposite. With Costner’s wanderer battling an evil despot whose minions glide through the water on improvised vessels, there’s a touch of Mad Max, which created the “apocalyptic Western” genre years earlier. Meanwhile, Costner’s character is in the tradition of great cowboys. Known only as The Mariner, he has spent years alone in the ocean and is a stranger to civilization. He threatens to kill children and sells a woman into sex slavery, before thinking better of it. His gradual turn towards kindness mirrors the dilemma facing other men of the wilderness, like Shane and Ethan Edwards.

The Postman was his next big swing, another apocalyptic Western, although this one was set on land. It’s a big, goofy film full of unintentional comedy and self-aggrandizement so blatant you almost admire it (like Waterworld, The Postman hinges on a woman desiring Costner’s seed). It also features lots of men on horseback and a ramshackle society that resembles the pre-industrial West: a lawless world where murder goes unpunished, and Americans live in small towns with little knowledge of the world beyond. Costner plays another rambler who poses as a postman in order to survive, but he soon is imbued with the spirit of a civil service, and through his work, he essentially re-forms the U.S. government after a long period of anarchy. Like many Westerns, it’s a portrait of a nation being born, or in this case, re-born. Watch out: it might end up being prophetic.

Elsewhere in the ‘90s, Costner found Westerns where no one else was looking for them. Eastwood, in his follow-up to Unforgiven, cast him in A Perfect World, another searching inquiry into the nature of good and evil, with Costner dazzling as a Texas fugitive who bonds with his child hostage. He rode horses, wielded a bow and arrow, and battled a corrupt sheriff in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Finally, he traded a pistola for a five-wood in Tin Cup, with Costner playing a former golf champion and current driving range instructor, a man of few commitments and freewheeling confidence. Set among the cacti of the West Texas desert, it’s a film that hints at the blurry line between cowboy and athlete.

Speaking of which: Costner’s sneakiest Westerns are his baseball movies. Ron Shelton cast him as Crash Davis in Bull Durham in part based on his sweet swing—Costner took him to the batting cages during the audition process to show off his skills— but it was also due to his unflappable disposition. To Shelton, Crash was a modern-day gunslinger.  “I thought of him as a man without a past, without a home, without a town,” said Shelton in a commentary track, “and a man who goes from town to town looking for a fight wherever they’ll pay him to ply his trade. That cynicism, romanticism, and mean streak his character has, and that Kevin so wonderfully portrays, is really that of the archetypal American hero.” Shelton zeroed in on the scene in which Crash and his protégé “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) face off in an alley behind a bar, with Crash challenging the youngster to hit him in the chest with a ball. It might as well be set on a dusty street next to an old saloon. “If this was the 1880s,” said Shelton, “they’d have guns.”

Costner would go on to star in two more baseball films—Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game. The former shares with Westerns a love of the land, and an understanding of how the dirt beneath our feet is the foundation of a country. It also prompted the New York Times’ Stephen Holden to note in his review that Costner “bears an eerie resemblance to the 1930’s Gary Cooper, a Hollywood icon of America’s pioneer spirit if there ever was one.” Like Cooper, Costner’s face holds both childlike naivete and earned stoicism, capturing the sensibility of  a little boy playing Cowboy and Indians in his backyard, or maybe wiffle ball, and taking it just as seriously as could be.

For Love of the Game also illuminates the connection between Costner’s two chosen genres. As Billy Chapel, an aging pitcher on the verge of a perfect game, Costner is often alone on the mound, staring down the opposing batter. Only one can emerge victorious. It’s a classic Western duel, a moment of individual confrontation that captures the American character at its hardest and most honest. It’s a competition in which only the most cool-headed participant can survive. We have little doubt who it will be. That’s the essence of the cowboy and of Costner, who, for four decades now, has kept Hollywood’s oldest genre alive by pushing its boundaries towards unexplored territories.

Noah Gittell (@noahgittell) is a culture critic from Connecticut who loves alliteration. His work can be found at The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Ringer, Washington City Paper, LA Review of Books, and others. His new book, Baseball: The Movie, is currently available wherever you buy books.