Recently I looked at Clint Eastwood’s 1997 film, Absolute Power, hoping, perhaps, I could find the secret to author David Balducci’s novel of the same name, which was his breakthrough book.
Well, I hope the novel was different from the film; I heard the ending, at least, was different. (Let’s hope so; the ending to the movie, which is all I have at this point, is bizarre, baffling, and unconvincing.)
But the rest of the plot isn’t much better. The movie consists of a series of events that are strange, bizarre, and unrealistic. The story begins well enough, if you like this sort of thing: an art thief accidentally watches a man having a smarmy affair with a woman he’s not married to, he starts beating her up (for absolutely no reason), and she fights back.
Except that the man in question just happens to be the President of the United States (in this case, Gene Hackman), and, once he’s threatened, some Secret Service man burst into the room and shoot her. This sequence, though its repulsive, does exert a certain fascination. The problem is that you want to take a shower after watching this sequence. It seems almost prophetic, though.
I had to research the timing to see how prophetic. Apparently, David Balducci wrote his book a couple of years BEFORE the Clinton-Monica affair became public. He claims that he was, instead, contemplating the JFK legacy and what could have gone wrong. And if anything, it seems more relevant than ever in the era of Trump. The theme, of course, is a man who can get away with literally anything, because of his loyal supporters.
As I said, you need to take a shower afterward. But at least it doesn’t feel impossible — not yet.
Much more problematic is the scene in which FBI agent Ed Harris finds and talks to the art thief (Clint Eastwood) in a public place and they exchange cute dialog. Fine. But then, a few scenes later, Ed Harris is talking to the thief’s daughter (Laura Linney) to get her to participate in an elaborate scheme for Clint to reveal where he is.
At this point I was yelling at the screen, “But you just were talking to him, you idiot! Why didn’t you arrest him then?”
But a rendezvous gets set up, one in which snipers try to kill Clint (featuring Richard Jenkins as an assassin, the most bizarre casting in recent memory), but they fail, because you see, Clint jumps under a table, changes into a police uniform, then walks off as a policeman. This is a quick-change that Clark Kent, running into a phone booth to change into Superman, would be amazed at.
But wait. it gets worse. Much, much worse. A couple of scenes later, Ed Harris does some cute flirting with the daughter, with dialog worthy of junior high school. (“Did you know I wasn’t married, wink wink?”) She goes along, even though the only rational response is, “You stupid bastard, you almost got my father killed, and the bullets could have hit me as well!!!” No. No reason to let logic spoil a cute romantic scene.
From that point on, I’m just groaning at every mindless and illogical turn of this story. What went wrong? They had a fine director (Clint), a famous screenwriter doing the adaptation (William Goldman) and a stellar cast. What the hell happened?
I can only imagine that people are so hungry for a good, strong, high-concept story (and this of course did have high concept), they’ll settle for anything. Sigh.
