Absolute Power

Absolute Power is almost absolutely bad, probably because it's directed by Clint Eastwood, a director who's still in Spaghetti Western mode; where the good are dusty, the bad are in black and who cares if you're ugly.

Clint Eastwood has won a Best Director gong, but it's significant that Eastwood won his for Unforgiven, a "modern" Western with the usual bang bang's lack of subtlety, because Clint Eastwood soon runs out of ideas if characters become other than two dimensional.

Unforgiven had the virtue of being fresh, new to our experience, but I doubt that it would get onto too many people's best ever films list.

Absolute Power starts reasonably well with a shadowy, unidentified Eastwood playing Luther Whitney, a master thief, who is stealing from a mansion. Whilst he's on the job, he witnesses a crime, committed by a high official from the U.S. government, and then Absolute Power becomes a very run of the mill corruption in high places drama; a tale I felt I'd seen a dozen times before.

The cast of Absolute Power is good, Ed Harris, Gene Hackman and Judy Davis as well as Eastwood who is also a fine actor within his limits, but the script, based on a novel by David Baldacci and written by William Goldman, is unbelievably hollow.

Clint Eastwood's Malpaso Productions produced the film and so Eastwood had better take some of the blame for the script as well.

I can't remember seeing Judy Davis looking ordinary before. She's an actress of uncommon ability, able to wring the arteries out of heart of the characters she plays.

She plays Gloria Russell in Absolute Power, a hard arsed spook, but has been asked it seems to play the part, very incongruously, sometimes for laughs, although I really don't think that that was the real intention. It just comes out that way!

Her performance looked utterly forced and out of context.Ed Harris is the chief copper in Absolute Power and is the pivot around which anything that is worthwhile in the film revolves.

There's even a scene in the movie where Clint Eastwood shines, one he plays with Harris. Eastwood has been developing some softer, older man qualities in recent films that are appealing, but I had the feeling that Ed Harris was the catalyst for even that small gem of a moment.

Ed Harris also has some nice moments with Luther's daughter Kate (Laura Linney), who as you'd expect in a Hollywood crime film is of course a county prosecutor, but still Absolute Power absolutely needed a better director and a better script.

Utterly unbelievable is one of the main spooks, played by Scott Glenn, offing himself near the end of the film. It seemed that the director just didn't know what to do with him!

But if you want to see something ridiculous, cop the other spook played by Dennis Haysbert who has a couple of lines and one look that would have done Ed Wood, that worst of directors proud.