Ross622 Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice is a romantic thriller with with good casting choices and great performances from Paul Newman, Sally Field, Wilford Brimley, and Bob Balaban. The thing i truly didn't get about the movie is that it was found out that Michael Gallagher (played by Newman) didn't kidnap Diaz, and Bob Balaban's character still believed that Gallagher still kidnapped him.Another thing i didn't get about the film was during the inquiry when Wilford Brimley's character asks Sally Field's character some questions Field's lawyer still objects to his questions when they are not even in a courtroom. But i still enjoyed the movie but those were the 2 huge mistakes that i found while watching it. Director Sydney Pollack can brilliantly execute a thriller movie just like he did with The Firm starring Tom Cruise. The film has great performances throughout especially from Paul Newman who is excellent here as he always is in his other movies. This a great thriller film with excellent writing to it as well.

AaronCapenBanner Sydney Pollock directed this interesting drama starring Paul Newman as Miami Liquor salesman Mike Gallagher, who is the son of a mobster, though Mike himself is unconnected. When a Union Head is murdered, and mob involvement suspected, an overambitious Federal Attorney(played by Bob Balaban) decides to pressure Mike into helping them(even knowing his innocence) by going to irresponsible reporter Megan Carter(played by Sally Field) to publish the story. Mike has a solid alibi for the murder, but won't reveal it because it would hurt his fragile friend Teresa(played by Melinda Dillon) When the story(and her involvement) is published, it leads to tragic consequences, and Mike decides to teach the reporter and FBI a lesson by beating them at their own game...Well acted and made drama makes good points about the media and personal responsibility. Almost goes wrong with misguided romance of Mike and Megan, but rights itself with memorable finale, with Wilford Brimley stealing the film in a fantastic supporting performance, laying down the law in amusing yet intelligent fashion.

mbat19 Absence of Malice had the potential to be a good pic about the morality of the media and being mindful of how the news is reported and who is the ones giving the information to those who report it. The movie has a great cast: Paul Newman as the son of a reputed mobster who may or may not be involved in nefarious doings. Sally Field as the gullible reporter who is unaware of the puppet strings on her back. Melinda Dillion as the friend of Paul Newman's character that ends up dead. The cast however cant do much with the material given to it. Overall the story is OK but it just does not get moving or hold any interest in the characters.

Robert J. Maxwell It's not a bad movie, not insulting to the intelligence or pandering to the glands, and it deals with matters of some ethical importance, but, man, it's murky stuff.Sally Field, cute and pixyish as ever, is a newspaper reporter in Miami. She's not particularly ambitious but she's responsible and feels that the public has the right to know whatever she herself knows.An unscrupulous local law-enforcement officer, Bob Balaban, decides to harass Paul Newman, bootlegger's son but innocent of any wrongdoing, in connection with the disappearance of a union organizer. In an interview with Field, Balaban leaves a folder containing the case against Newman conspicuously on his desk, then tells Fields he's going away and she should make herself at home. It's an invitation to read some documents that the law forbids him to reveal.Complications ensue. There is a death that results from Field's honest but ruthless reporting. And things gets really confusing -- I HOPE -- because somewhere along the line I found myself leaping around blindly in all directions trying to follow the plot.The jactitations reminded me of something else -- all my home theater equipment. See, the units themselves -- the DVD and tape players, the amplifier -- they're all black. So are the buttons. And so is much of the tiny printing. In the subdued lighting of the vast living room here in the trailer I call home, you can't see or read the buttons or the print. You know why? I'll tell you why. Because the whole Geschaft was designed by a bunch of moss-covered technicians in a brightly lighted room with all the equipment on eye-level shelves. They can read all the details of the black print on the black face plate and interpret all of the complicated carbuncles on the rear. Fine in a laboratory, a headache at home.I had the same feeling about this plot, with all its criss-crossing motives and correlated conundrums. The writers and the director -- Sidney Pollack, whose work I admire -- and the script doctors must have gone over the story multiple times until they had all the rip currents memorized. Then they plunged ahead with a story that makes Raymond Chandler look like a model of expositional clarity.And frankly Paul Newman, another whose work elsewhere I've admired, is no help. When he doesn't sink his teeth into a role, nothing much comes of his performance, and with the exception of one scene that's the case here. Sally Field is okay, cute thing that she is. The best performance, perhaps, is Melinda Dillon's as the pathetic, weak school principal. At least she gets to go crazy, running from lawn to lawn in her nightgown, trying to pick up every newspaper on every front yard in the city of Miami. Next best performance: Bob Balaban as the unflappable slime ball who starts the whole tale.It's too bad so much was lost. Journalistic ethics have become more important an issue now than they were when this film was released -- a few years after the wildly successful "All The President's Men." Newspapers have the time and resources for in-depth reportage, in a way that even 24/7 cable news channels do not. They maintain permanent bureaus in places like Madrid, even when nothing is going on. They have facilities to investigate more than sexual peccadilloes. Lamentably, the way things are going we will be left with two newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And after that? Sixty-second sound bites to be played over and over, and hour-long opinion journalists telling us what think the sound bites meant.