Absence of Malice

Rating:
Summary: ABSENCE OF AWESOME!
Review: ...and by 'Absence Of Awesome', I mean quite the opposite. This movie IS awesome! Paul Newman ignites the screen with kerosene soaked he-man sexiness. Those blue eyes may seem cold, but they burn through you like a small child using a magnified glass to burn a small ant on the pavement at recess! Sally Field is as radiant as a Jamaican sunrise as she splashes her acting abilities throughout the movie like a farmer sowing seed in his freshly plowed field! The plot is as complex as Einstien's theory of relativity, and with the same effect: once completed, both the movie and the theory of relativity result in an atomic expolsion that can bend time and space. There isn't actually an explosion at the end of the movie, per se, but perhaps in the director's cut he'll put one in. I can't sing my praises ENOUGH for this movie, but if I DID, it would be a chorus line of dancing girls kickin' out a medley of showtunes with ME as the lead, wearing a sequined blue suit and a curly moustache singing my own falsetto version of 'Workin' In a Coalmine' (The Devo Version).

Rating:
Summary: A great film that only gets better with age
Review: Absence of Malice is one of my all-time favorites, and the first "older" movie that I grabbed when it was finally released on DVD. In my opinion this is one film that should be required viewing for every journalism major in the USA.

Hollywood movies very rarely criticize the press (except those deemed too far to the right politically), so this film was in an exclusive category from the beginning. The powerful story and the restrained, polished performances from its excellent cast carry as big of a punch now as they did a quarter-century ago when the film was first released. Paul Newman seems tailor-made for his role as the adult son of a famous mob figure, and Sally Fields is her typical annoying self as the headline-seeking thirtyish reporter who is fed an untrue story about Newman's character by a conniving federal investigator (Bob Balaban, who's very effective in the bad-guy role) and runs with it, setting off a chain of events that eventually wrecks several people's lives, including her own.

The supporting cast is uniformly excellent: Melinda Dillon in a rare dramatic role as Newman's sweet, mentally slow sister who unwittingly reveals her darkest secret to the world by talking to Fields; Balaban's obsessive intensity makes you think he's actually in more scenes than he is; and Wilford Brimley as Balaban's boss almost steals the show when he rides into town to clean up the mess. It is Brimley's scenes as the Asst. U.S. Attorney (with that nice country drawl) that brings the movie's tension to its ultimate climax, and justice is finally done, although it's too little, too late for most of the characters.

I think this film was misunderstood by many who saw it back in 1981 because the majority of the public at that time still held the mainstream media and its minions in high regard. The scene where Brimley responds to the newspaper's lawyer, who invokes the First Amendment when Fields is pressed about her sources, shocked many viewers at that time and probably still does even today: "The First Amdendment doesn't say that, counselor...the privilege [protecting a source] doesn't exist." This concept was at the very heart of movies like All the President's Men (Who was "Deep Throat"?), and Brimley shoots it down in 5 seconds.

The ultimate point of the movie, that publicity can destroy innocent people's lives, was not as well understood in the early 80's as it is today. Field's proud reporter and her equally-arrogant editor weren't evil, just selfish and sloppy. Nor is Field's character stupid; she just never stopped to think that Balaban's unscrupulous investigator was using her for his own ends because she was focused on making her deadline. (There's subtle hints of ageism when her boss tells her "You'd make a fine editor" and Fields snaps back "I'm not over the hill yet!" while glancing at the twentyish blond reporter nearby, knowing that this woman is her replacement.)

This film is rich in subtleties and textures that can only be enjoyed after repeated viewings. The fact that Newman's quiet "everyman" hero finally sets up everyone else for their inevitable fall, then gets to watch the implosion first-hand, is merely icing on a very rich and tasty cake. I urge anyone who's never seen this film to buy it today! You won't be sorry.


Rating:
Summary: "You got your selves."
Review: Elliott Rosen is an obsessive prosecutor who is desperate to get some inside info on the "mob." He steps in to a moral grey area in his pursuit. Knowing that Michael Colin Gallagher (Paul Newman) is innocent of any crime he plans to push him into finding out who did it. The plan is simple he will leak the false fact out, through reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field), that Gallagher is being investigated. This information has a negative impact on Gallagher's business. Further pursuit leads to a death of the innocent. Naturally the paper that prints this has no intention of retracting. Gallagher finds a unique solution. See if you can spot it.

This movie does not make an immediate impact on you with the exception of Brimley's final confrontation speech. However repeated viewing brings out the subtleties that will make this one of your favorite movies for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: "You got your selves."
Review: Elliott Rosen is an obsessive prosecutor who is desperate to get some inside info on the "mob." He steps in to a moral grey area in his pursuit. Knowing that Michael Colin Gallagher (Paul Newman) is innocent of any crime he plans to push him into finding out who did it. The plan is simple he will leak the false fact out, through reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field), that Gallagher is being investigated. This information has a negative impact on Gallagher's business. Further pursuit leads to a death of the innocent. Naturally the paper that prints this has no intention of retracting. Gallagher finds a unique solution. See if you can spot it.

This movie does not make an immediate impact on you with the exception of Brimley's final confrontation speech. However repeated viewing brings out the subtleties that will make this one of your favorite movies for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Ending one of the best I have seen
Review: I have never seen Paul Newman take a back seat in acting untill Wilford Brimley takes charge and sets everyone straight. Best ending to a movie I have ever seen. I rewatch it every year or so and really love having it on DVD now.
Harold

Rating:
Summary: Ending one of the best I have seen
Review: I have never seen Paul Newman take a back seat in acting untill Wilford Brimley takes charge and sets everyone straight. Best ending to a movie I have ever seen. I rewatch it every year or so and really love having it on DVD now.
Harold

Rating:
Summary: Paul Newman tries to teach the Fourth Estate a needed lesson
Review: If Woodward & Bernstein brought down the Imperial Presidency of Richard Nixon by exposing Watergate, which is arguably a good thing, then it introduced the era of "Gotcha" journalism. The press in this country is considered the fourth estate and it certainly has started acting like another branch of the government with the key difference that nobody checks or balances it. In "Absence of Malice," Sydney Pollack's indictment of the power of the press in the modern era, one man is given good reason to fight the system.

Michael Colin Gallagher (Paul Newman) is the son of a Mafia boss, long dead, who know owns and runs a liquor warehouse. He knows nothing about anything, but Elliott Rosen (Bob Balaban), the leader of a Justice Department Strike Force who is getting nowhere in southern Florida, leaks a fake story that Gallagher is the subject of an investigation. Smelling blood in the water, reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) goes after the story that is not really there. Gallagher's life is exposed to the world and as the story that is not there grows it destroys the life of an innocent, Teresa Perrone (Melinda Dillon). At that point Gallagher concocts a plan to bring down everybody, simply by letting them do exactly what they want to do in a nice example of how to give a lot of people enough rope to hang themselves.

Unfortunately there the script requires Newman and Field to go through the motions for one of the more unbelievable romances in movie history, which only gets in the way of the focus of the story. You can never believe that she sees him as anything more than a story any more than you can accept that he is able to look past what she is trying to do to see a woman worth loving. Certainly that set up is not necessary for the powerful scene where Gallagher lays hands on Carter to show her exactly how many damage a human being writing a story on a computer can do to another person. But even then, the script asks us to believe that the spark between these two has not been wholly extinguished, and that is not something I can do.

But "Absence of Malice" is more than saved by the film's final scene where Gallagher's trap succeeds brilliantly and Wilford Brimley shows up as Asst. U.S. Atty. Gen. James A. Wells to put the pieces together and dispense a little judicial justice. Carter does too little too late in terms of trying to do something noble, but we are given to believe that she has learned her lesson, although I would certainly like more evidence than this. But even if she goes straight there are plenty of other reporters willing to play the game knowing that they will rarely be held accountable or have to play for any mistakes that they make. This is a depressing film, not just because it tells a depressing story, but because the grim reality it portrays of how the press functions in this country is distressingly true.

"Absence of Malice" received Oscar nominations for Paul Newman as Best Actor in a Leading Role, although his solid performance is nothing special, and for Melinda Dillon as Best Actress in a Supporting Role as the most memorable character in the film. The scene in which she tries to hide from her family the fact that her name and life are being tossed around on the front page of the newspaper is both chilling and heartbreaking. Kurt Luedtke was nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and except for the unnecessary and problematic romantic subplot there is plenty of gravity to the story and scenes. Watching this movie again makes me think that the time has come for somebody to go after the state of journalism today and use something more pointed that the stiletto Pollack employs in this 1981 film.

Rating:
Summary: The Sly Fox Gets Revenge
Review: If you enjoy watching films in which arrogant people get their comeuppance, you might enjoy this one.

Paul Newman deftly shows how an astute, calculating "avenger" can turn the tables on those who have hurt his business and a dear friend. Sally Fields gives a credible performance as a self-absorbed, "champion of truth" journalist who's oblivious to the impact of her stories on people's lives and livelihood. Wilford Brimley is at his best when he "reads the riot act" to each one of the "culprits" in the climactic confrontation scene, and, in doing so, ties together the loose ends of the film's storyline.

While the movie lacks the action (and pace) of many popular films today, it rewards the thoughtful, patient viewer who appreciates watching a carefully executed revenge. It's one of my all-time favorites. I've seen this film about a half dozen times over a period of years and still enjoy it as much today as I did when I first saw it on the big screen.

Rating:
Summary: The dangers of the public spotlight
Review: Not quite a star-studded flick, but chock full of subtly forceful personalities. Paul Newman plays Gallagher, a crusty but otherwise legit Florida-based liquor wholesaler whose life is turned upside-down when the Miami Standard fingers him as a possible material witness. Under current laws regarding libel, Newman can always sue the paper for libel. However, the law sets a higher standard of wrongdoing to be proven when the victim is a public-figure. (The distinction was meant to prevent public officials from using libel laws to block any criticism of their actions - most notably in the case of southern police officials during the early civil-rights years; unfortunately for Gallagher, the laws have been expanded to cover any figure in the public eye, whether he's there by choice or despite it.) Because the Standard acts without malice, and only reports what's been leaked to it by a shifty DoJ official (Bob Balaban), the fact that the story itself is actually incorrect is irrelevant. While DoJ hopes to pressure Gallagher to turn state's evidence, or somehow lead them to somebody who can, the newspaper hopes Gallagher will come forward and give his own spin. (Exaggeration is an often-used media tactic - one hoped to pressure a story's subject to reflexively come forward and give a story that, while less spectacular, is nonetheless worse off now that it's been confirmed.) While Gallagher comes forward, and hooks up with Sally Field as the Standard's ace reporter, he soon finds another way to wreak havoc - by turning his enemies against each other.

There's something satisfying about the deceptive ease with which Gallagher turns the media against itself, but the resolution is unsatisfying. Wilford Brimley plays the Assistant Attorney General who gets everybody honest by threatening to make people talk under oath. (We get the point, people have no problem saying anything as long as they don't have to stand by it.) The last scene is essentially Brimley's one-man show, one that upstages Sally Fields's character's turn-about: rather than disclose Gallagher as the source of her latest story, she's willing to take the fall for him. Her logic is impeccable - somebody is going to take the blame and the fall no matter what. Why not her? If anything, the film disappoints in underplaying the attraction between the two, which only makes you wonder whether her denouement is one of journalistic integrity or love. Instead, we cheer that Brimley will get to tell the media what he thinks (and nobody in this room is going to like what I have to say, he warns) and the way he exacts retribution (you're no White House appointee, he tells Balaban's character. "The one who hired you, is me." Start packing).

Rating:
Summary: The dangers of the public spotlight
Review: Not quite a star-studded flick, but chock full of subtly forceful personalities. Paul Newman plays Gallagher, a crusty but otherwise legit Florida-based liquor wholesaler whose life is turned upside-down when the Miami Standard fingers him as a possible material witness. Under current laws regarding libel, Newman can always sue the paper for libel. However, the law sets a higher standard of wrongdoing to be proven when the victim is a public-figure. (The distinction was meant to prevent public officials from using libel laws to block any criticism of their actions - most notably in the case of southern police officials during the early civil-rights years; unfortunately for Gallagher, the laws have been expanded to cover any figure in the public eye, whether he's there by choice or despite it.) Because the Standard acts without malice, and only reports what's been leaked to it by a shifty DoJ official (Bob Balaban), the fact that the story itself is actually incorrect is irrelevant. While DoJ hopes to pressure Gallagher to turn state's evidence, or somehow lead them to somebody who can, the newspaper hopes Gallagher will come forward and give his own spin. (Exaggeration is an often-used media tactic - one hoped to pressure a story's subject to reflexively come forward and give a story that, while less spectacular, is nonetheless worse off now that it's been confirmed.) While Gallagher comes forward, and hooks up with Sally Field as the Standard's ace reporter, he soon finds another way to wreak havoc - by turning his enemies against each other.

There's something satisfying about the deceptive ease with which Gallagher turns the media against itself, but the resolution is unsatisfying. Wilford Brimley plays the Assistant Attorney General who gets everybody honest by threatening to make people talk under oath. (We get the point, people have no problem saying anything as long as they don't have to stand by it.) The last scene is essentially Brimley's one-man show, one that upstages Sally Fields's character's turn-about: rather than disclose Gallagher as the source of her latest story, she's willing to take the fall for him. Her logic is impeccable - somebody is going to take the blame and the fall no matter what. Why not her? If anything, the film disappoints in underplaying the attraction between the two, which only makes you wonder whether her denouement is one of journalistic integrity or love. Instead, we cheer that Brimley will get to tell the media what he thinks (and nobody in this room is going to like what I have to say, he warns) and the way he exacts retribution (you're no White House appointee, he tells Balaban's character. "The one who hired you, is me." Start packing).