Item: Absolute Power
Rating: 6
Author: JoBlo

Absolute Power

By JoBlo

August 24th 2001, 12:00am

	Review Date: Director: Clint Eastwood Writer: William Goldman Producers: Clint Eastwood, Karen Spiegel Actors: Clint Eastwood as Luther Gene Hackman as President Allen Ed Harris as Seth

Review:

A pretty decent suspense movie, until its last half hour or so, which end on a flaccid note and don’t generate the needed resolution for the solid build-up that came before. But check out that cast list! There’s Lara Linney, Scott Glenn and Judy Davis as well! Decent performances from one and all, although Davis seemed to be in another picture altogether. She was the only character who seemed to be “mugging” for the camera every two minutes…very strange and quite “out of place” in this film.

Kudos to Harris and Linney though, both of whom added some spice to the movie, and I certainly appreciated the chemistry between them as well. Eastwood was great as the “old school” thief who witnesses the President of the United States commiting a crime, and Hackman (as the president) was good, but pretty underused.

I do have to say that I did have a couple of small problems with the film even before its predictable and lame conclusion. The one thing that I REALLY didn’t like was the fact that pretty much everyone around the President was played out as one-dimensional bad guys. I mean, c’mon…are ALL politicians and members of the White House supposed to be heartless and shit?!? (maybe I’m just naive)

But I let that go after a while. The pace was also a little slow. For example, the main setup of the film (the thief witnessing the crime) took NO LESS than 30 minutes right at the beginning of the movie!! Wow…you shoulda cut about 10 minutes there and added it to the weak ending, which was a little “too easy” for my liking (and why build Harris’ character throughout the film and then hand him the answers in the end?).

But overall, I was pretty much into this little suspense thriller for the most part, and it certainly came through as a weeknight rental, so I would still recommend that you check it out if you are a fan of any of the actors in the film, or if you enjoy suspense flicks.

But DO NOT expect anything close to IN THE LINE OF FIRE (which was awesome)!

PS: Where the heck was the First Lady during all of this?!?!