Lovable as a Loser, Unbelievable as a Hero

There are two actors named Kevin Costner. One is a terrific character actor, the other his evil twin, who wants to play icons.

Mr. Costner began his superstardom on a lucky note, playing a lackluster Eliot Ness in "The Untouchables"; no one noticed how little charge there was in his performance because he was flanked by two dynamos in Sean Connery and Robert De Niro. In epics in which he was left to carry the picture - huge, unwieldy, club-footed clunkers such as "Robin Hood," "Waterworld," "The Postman," "Dances With Wolves," "JFK," and "Wyatt Earp" - he has proved himself a cinematic black hole, sucking all the energy out of the film. (Compare the woodenness of his Earp to the shrewd, lively portrayal of the same character by Kurt Russell in "Tombstone.")

Mr. Costner doesn't have it in him to play heroes. This should have been obvious to him back in 1988, when he followed up "The Untouchables" with his first great performance, as Crash Davis in Ron Shelton's "Bull Durham." A one-time minor-league baseball prospect himself, Mr. Costner understood instinctively the odd rhythms and nuances of men who competed for a living and never quite succeeded. Losers, we might ungenerously call them, except that what held them back wasn't so much lack of talent, but - as in the case of Roy McAvoy, his golfer in "Tin Cup" - a vague, unsettling feeling he could never be entirely satisfied just with winning.

Mr. Costner's Denny Davies in "The Upside of Anger" is his latest variation on this theme. Denny is a winner - or, more precisely, was a winner, with the Detroit Tigers - the successful athlete that Crash Davis, Roy McAvoy, and (presumably) Kevin Costner dreamed of being. He has wound up a sad case nonetheless, a shiftless, beer-guzzling cynic who makes a living autographing baseballs and hosting a radio call-in show where he refuses to talk baseball.

The reason why he won't talk about the sport is never explained, but Denny's ambivalence for the game suggests that he blames the sport for his disillusionment. The disillusionment in Mr. Costner's most interesting characters never runs too deep; it often stems from nothing more than the failure to have found the right woman. But this simple-mindedness is redeemed by the richness and complexity of the relationships he chooses. His losers aren't always redeemed for their efforts, but they're at least fulfilled.

Acting in movies without the burden of carrying the production releases something relaxed and enjoyable in Mr. Costner. In "Open Range" he shared screen time with Robert Duvall, and the result was a taut, edgy performance in which, for the first time in his career, he was able to stand up to a powerhouse villain (in this case, Michael Gambon) without being blown off the screen. (He almost ceased to exist when on screen with Mr. De Niro in "The Untouchables," and Alan Rickman made him seem like an extra in "Robin Hood.") Being a co-star also seemed to affect his work behind the camera. The flaccid, gooey direction of "Dances With Wolves" was replaced by a lean, purposeful storytelling style that makes most of Clint Eastwood's Westerns seem pretentious and overheated.

In "The Upside of Anger," Mr. Costner is the big name in the cast but clearly content to play the secondary role to a strong actress, Joan Allen, much the way Jack Nicholson did to Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment." He enters the movie as if climbing through a window - in one scene, literally - and insinuates himself into the story so engagingly that after a while it starts to sag when he's not around.

Mr. Costner is given one truly bravura scene to play - he's taken enough crap from Joan Allen's character and storms into her bedroom, kicking the door down. The critics at the screening I attended applauded; perhaps like me, they had been waiting to see someone do that to Joan Allen for years, or maybe were just waiting to see Mr. Costner work up the gumption to do it. In any case, it's a jolt, and a refreshing one, giving off more heat than anything Mr. Costner's ever done.

Contrary to F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are second acts in American lives, or at least American movies, and Kevin Costner's, so far, is proving to be more interesting than his first.