Gloria Russell: Allen, did you have sex with her?
Allen Richmond: I... I don't know.
Gloria Russell: Bill, I need you to examine her.
Bill Burton: I'm no gynecologist.
Gloria Russell: I just made you one!
Bill Burton: Oh, Christ...
When we first encounter Luther Whitney (Clint Eastwood) in ABSOLUTE POWER, he is sitting in an art gallery sketching hands and eyes from paintings in one of those slow, silent moments characteristic of an Eastwood-directed film. Whitney, it turns out, is a professional thief, and when he breaks into a massive house with walls covered in art, we expect him to begin snaring the paintings. Instead, he finds a walk-in vault where he begins clearing out jewels, coins and cash. At that moment, you may be tempted to break into a slight smile, impressed that Eastwood has merely fleshed out his character under the guise of plot development. Perhaps, you think, this won't be just another plot-driven conspiracy thriller. Perhaps three-dimensional characters are going to make it something special.
Just wait sixty seconds. The events in ABSOLUTE POWER revolve around what happens while Luther is in that vault, staring through one-way glass at the two people who show up in the middle of the robbery. One of them is Christy Sullivan (Melora Hardin), wife of Washington power broker Walter Sullivan (E. G. Marshall); the other is Alan Richmond, who happens to be rather powerful in his own right -- he is the President of the United States. Both Christy and Richmond are drunk, their sex play gets rough, and just as she is about to stab the President with a letter opener Christy is blown away by two Secret Service men (Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert). Luther manages to escape, but the President's people know there was a witness. As they try to find Luther, the design a cover-up of the murder as the result of a botched robbery, making Luther a prime suspect. And thus begins the plotboiler.
Almost any other director would have taken this material and made it a big, dumb Hollywood thriller -- and frankly, that probably would have been the best thing for it. Eastwood is a director with a precise control over the details of his films, but in ABSOLUTE POWER he spends so much time fussing over those details that he fails to notice that the story is completely absurd. Luther is able to take perfect photos of his estranged daughter Kate (Laura Linney) without being noticed, but he does a complete sketch of the Sullivan estate before robbing it; the President's tough Chief-of-Staff (Judy Davis) turns into a giggling schoolgirl when she thinks the President has given her a diamond necklace, then has a conversation with him about the cover-up while they are dancing in front of hundreds of people at a state dinner. While Eastwood is able to construct clockwork sequences like an ambush at a coffee shop, he doesn't seem to care that, like much of what goes on in ABSOLUTE POWER, it is resolved through pure coincidence.
Even the casting manages to get in the way, specifically the casting of Hackman as Richmond. The press notes for ABSOLUTE POWER boast of Hackman's career that "there is no such thing as a 'Gene Hackman role,'" but that simply isn't true. Hackman has gotten stuck in a rut as the arrogant authority figure, and there is nothing to discover in his performance. It is also hard to figure out how the pathetic, libidinous drunkard of that opening scene becomes the take-charge whip-cracker, or why his press conference in support of his grieving friend Sullivan demonstrates such a lousy poker face you wonder what kind of politician this guy could possibly be. The script, by the legendary William Goldman, does offer a few nice touches and typically snappy dialogue, and Ed Harris plays the detective investigating the murder as a courtly and respectful spin on the usual foul-mouthed cop. When a central character seems to be a different person from scene to scene, however, those little details lose a lot of their charm.
That brings us to Eastwood's Luther Whitney, as baffling a screen character as I can recall. Eastwood's acting has grown more interesting with the passing years, more relaxed and subtle, but he has devoted nearly every ounce of energy in the creation of ABSOLUTE POWER to making his own character sympathetic. A pivotal moment in ABSOLUTE POWER finds Luther catching the President's hypocritical press conference on television just as he is preparing to flee the country, and deciding at that moment to stay and fight the power. Never mind that before that scene we had no indication that Whitney even knew the man in the Sullivan house was the President; in fact, the scene plays funnier and more interesting if Whitney is such a recluse that he doesn't even know what the President looks like. But everything is subjugated to giving Luther the moral high ground, making him a doting father and a good citizen with a handful of quirky traits. I'm willing to grant the conceit that Whitney is a master of disguise even though it doesn't seem particularly necessary for a sneak thief -- maybe he needed a hobby when he tired of sketching the Old Masters in the Smithsonian -- but ABSOLUTE POWER lost me when it became clear that this man who could disarm any security system in the world couldn't program a VCR for his alibi. Eastwood has turned out a film which doesn't make a shred of sense, but at least we understand that Luther was just an ordinary Joe Six-Pack who was stealing a million dollars in jewels when he witnessed the President commit a sexy murder.
By : Scott Renshaw
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 1
In 1992, Clint Eastwood won a Best Director Oscar for his excellent western "Unforgiven". The next year he followed that up by directing the equally excellent "A Perfect World". In 1995 he received great acclaim for directing "The Bridges of Madison County". Something has happened to Clint Eastwood. Something bad.
"Absolute Power" is an absolute mess. The film opens with two very pointless scenes, and then dives into the story. It seems that Eastwood is a burglar and one night he decides to break into the house of a millionaire (Marshall). While in the vault of the house, a drunken couple enters the room. Eastwood is able to hide in the vault, and luckily it has a two-way mirror so that he can see everything going on. As it turns out, the two people are the millionaire's wife, and the President of the United States (Hackman). As they play around with each other, the film keeps cutting to Eastwood every three seconds so he can look disgusted. We must see this reaction 75 times during the scene. The President then decides he's going to slap the girl around, and then turns into a raving psychotic. He tries to kill the girl (this is the President of the United States folks) and during the struggle the secret service breaks into the room and kills the girl. Eastwood now must decide whether or not to run or to try and bring down the President of the United States.
Eastwood is also supposed to be a "master of disguises". His brilliant disguises consist of a hat and jacket, sometimes a fake mustache. Amazingly, even though he just looks like Clint Eastwood with a hat on, he is able to fool people who are just 10 feet away.
Eastwood has used the same composer for his films since the mid-80s, a person by the name of Lennie Niehaus, who is absolutely terrible. However, in "Unforgiven", "A Perfect World", and here again in "Absolute Power" there's about 5 minutes of really good score. Each and every time, Clint Eastwood has composed that score himself. So why can't he do the entire film? He obviously knows what good score is. Why he lets Niehaus compose a boring score for each movie he makes is beyond me.
There is one decent scene in the film. It's when the cop assigned to the case (Harris) goes to talk to Eastwood about his possible connection with the crime. It's a very simple scene, it's just two men talking. But the two stars seem to play off of each other well and I was hoping for more interaction between their two characters.
The resolution of the events in the film is both unsatisfying and unclear. But the main problem with the whole premise is that the villain of the film is the President of the United States. It's absurd. Another problem is that the President, being an insane psychopath, should be the main focus of the film. He's not. Hackman is in the film for maybe 15 minutes, most of that being the scene where he's trying to rape and kill the girl. I hope Hackman got paid a lot of money for his cameo appearance. It's also equally absurd that we are supposed to be rooting for Eastwood, who is also a criminal. But I guess since he's not a violent criminal then that makes it ok.
