Absence of Malice

Rating:
Summary: ABSENCE OF MALICE!
Review: SEE the star of "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Sting" attack the star of "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun!" in this CRITICAL EXAMINATION of the FOURTH ESTATE! Is PAUL NEWMAN involved with organized crime or is he AN INNOCENT MAN? Does journalist SALLY FIELD care about the TRUTH or just getting the STORY? Written by former reporter KURT LUETKE, enjoy this study of the POWER and PRIVILEGE of the PRESS! SEE Wilford Brimley come in at the end and put everybody in their place! Another social commentary film from director SYDNEY POLLACK!

Rating:
Summary: Good performances...ethics be damned
Review: The issue of leaking information to the press has been around for years, and this film does its best to illustrate how badly it can backfire when the sources aren't properly checked and re-checked.

Having said that, and being a journalist myself, I just want to shoot Sally Field for her gross violations of journalist ethics. Getting involved with the subject? No how, no way. It just isn't done. If you can accept this HUGE leap of journalistic and editorial faith, then the rest of the movie is a breeze.

Aside from Newman, I think the best performance in the movie is one of the briefest...Wilford Brimley as the U.S. Attorney who gets to the bottom of the mess. It's just a pleasure to watch him go through the paces of tearing Bob Balaban's little vendetta all to pieces, and to experience his grudging approval to let Newman walk.

Rating:
Summary: REVENGE WITHOUT BULLETS
Review: When you watch the theatrical trailer of ABSENCE OF MALICE, you are lead to think that this movie describes Paul Newman's revenge and will contain a lot of violent scenes. This is not true. In fact, has a trailer ever described accurately a movie ?

ABSENCE OF MALICE is, in the first place, an "actor" movie, with two stars of 1981 : Paul Newman and Sally Field. The secondary roles are also well written and interesting. The movie belongs to the category of moral movies and tries to defend these two ideas :

- Things and people are not always what or who they seem to be.

- The newspapers should have the duty to verify their sources before printing anything.

The treatment of the subject is well done, the screenplay being sometimes too weak. But Sydney Pollack, with this material, was able to present a conventional but still watchable movie.

A DVD zone moral education