Kevin Costner has as many fans as detractors; he is a steadfast box-office attraction but must strive for artistic respectability with each new film. Seen as the sexy embodiment of a healthy, positive image of American masculinity at the peak of his career in the early 1990s, Costner's public persona has suffered since then from his failure to live up to the standards set by his predecessors, the male stars of Hollywood's glamorous past. Because of his role as the dreamer who, guided by a mysterious voice, builds a baseball field in

the middle of his cornfield in Field of Dreams (1989), Costner was compared, above all, to the Jimmy Stewart of Frank Capra's films. This and other allusions to Gary Cooper, prompted by Costner's similar handsome looks, possibly traced a path for him in the audience's and the critics' imagination very unlike the one...