USA, R, 121 m, 1997
Directed by Clint Eastwood. Stars Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, et al.

Absolute Power may not exemplify Clint Eastwood's faculty as a director, but it's a choice showcase for his often underestimated acting skills. He plays Luther Whitney, a ripening crook that comes out of retirement to burglarize the estate of a vacationing Washington tycoon named Walter Sullivan (E.G. Marshall). Eastwood dons a golfer's cap and half-glasses to accentuate the character's advancing years, but he doesn't look for pathos in the intrinsic loneliness of the geezer's profession. Unlike the sad, balding crook Burt Reynolds played in Breaking In, Luther's not a broken down has-been; he's a wizened thief who luxuriates in the challenge of compromising seemingly infallible security systems to procure an ample haul. (He's no nickel and dimer.) Having painstakingly scrutinized the manor's layout and alarm configuration, Luther makes all the requisite preparations to insure a tidy job. Using a replicated key from an unspecified source, he slips in through the front door, and after enfeebling the alarms, creeps up an impossibly long staircase to the third floor. (An able painter, he takes time to appreciate the invaluable compositions that adorn the walls.) His plans go awry, though, for as soon as he finishes cleaning out the vault in the master bedroom, he's interrupted by the most improbable of visitors. Hiding behind the vault's two-way mirror, he watches in disbelief as an inebriated United States President Richmond (Gene Hackman) partakes in some rather indelicate foreplay with Sullivan's child bride, Christy (Melora Hardin). The protracted tryst eventually goes south as Richmond busts her in the chops and proceeds to strangle her. (Luther takes in the lurid display with obvious revulsion, but he doesn't entertain the notion of intervening.) Christy manages to fend Richmond off by thrusting a letter opener into his arm, but before she can do the old pervert in with a final jab to the chest, two Secret Service officers, Bill and Tom (Scott Glenn and Dennis Haybert respectively), burst into the room and blow the adulterous tart away.

A cover-up is orchestrated under the auspices of the president's chief of staff, Gloria Russell (Judy Davis), but she may be too high strung for the job. After hearing the gunshots, she bounds into the room and screams at the ensanguined corpse. As she flits about the crime scene, anxiously weighing the president's options, you may find yourself wondering how many mental institutions Richmond had to search before he found this nut. She flails her arms, rolls her eyes, and yelps at the guards like a toy dog that's about to have an accident. Davis has seen better days; she's photographed in such an unflattering manner that you almost forget she's the same dark beauty that enriched Husbands and Wives, Naked Lunch and The New Age and with her piercing sensuality. Wearing conservative pantsuits and sporting an unfortunate bowl cut hairdo that's offset by an ashen complexion, she appears almost sexless. (And her shrill hysterics feel better suited to a "Saturday Night Live" sketch about PMS.) During on particularly queasy exchange, Russell, who may be more concerned with protecting her own career than her illustrious boss's, orders the victim's vagina inspected for semen since Richmond can't recall if he penetrated her. ("I'm not a gynecologist," Bill protests; "I just made you one," she snips back.) A shadowy Luther remains in the vault and watches as the room is scrubbed free of prints, the bed sheets are changed, and any stray, telltale fibers in the carpet are vacuumed away. After two hours of meticulous house cleaning, the woozy president and his entourage vacate the estate, but a baggie containing the bloody, print-laden murder weapon is accidentally left behind. You'd presuppose that Luther is a scrupulous enough cracksman to remain stationary until the coast is clear, but as soon as the lights are flipped off in the room, he emerges from the vault and seizes the the letter opener along with the dead girl's diamond necklace. Outside, Russell breaks into a hysterical fit as she discovers that the letter opener is missing from her purse, so she marches her subordinates back inside to retrieve it. It's not clear if she or the guards spot Luther in the bedroom window above, but they charge back up the stairs as if the certainty of their subterfuge is about to be ashamed. Having his intended escape route nixed, Luther climbs out of the bedroom window and propels down the side of the manor on a rope. Once back upstairs, Bill and Tim race to the open window and spot Luther in the courtyard below, disappearing into a dark thicket. They immediately ascertain that Luther made off with the murder weapon since it's not where it's supposed to be, but since they didn't see where Russell dropped it in the first place, how in the world would they know where to look for it? And why would Russell seal it in a Ziplock instead of washing it off? This scene is one of many in Absolute Power that are maddeningly unclear, but we can't establish if the fault lies with the director, the editor or screenwriter William Goldman (who seems to have a penchant for dangling plot points that he may confuse with artistic ambiguity).

Seth Frank (Ed Harris), the copper on the case, begins to discover a myriad of loose ends, and the trail eventually leads him to Luther. We're told that the FBI believes that there are only six men alive who could've pulled off the burglary, and since Luther is the only one that resides in the area, he's the chief suspect. The best scene in the movie arrives when Seth interviews Luther in a museum dining room. Luther is accommodating to a fault; he buys Seth lunch and answers all of his questions with smiling aplomb. Of course, securing an airtight alibi and leaving no conceivable track uncovered has left precious little for the police to work with. Seth begrudgingly accepts this and it tickles Luther. (He delights in out-foxing Johnny Law.) When Seth relays the physicality of the burglar's escape, Luther chuckles and says, "Gee, if I could do that, I'd be the star of my AARP meeting." The good-natured scrimmage of wits between the two characters seems to reflect a genuinely genteel chemistry between Harris and Eastwood. They seem to be having so much fun acting together that we regret to see the interview end so soon.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service, desperate to carve out Luther's tongue, is slipping bugs into police headquarters in the hope that they can act on any leads before Seth and his fellow officers can. Sullivan, on the other hand, wants his wife's murder avenged, so he enlists the services of an enigmatic hitman (Richard Jenkins) to take Luther out. As the net continues to close tighter, Luther tries to patch things up with his estranged daughter, Kate (Laura Linney). Because he spent most his daughter's childhood slammed down in the big house, Luther's wants desperately to make up for lost time, but Kate, who's now a respected public attorney, isn't buying his laments. Eventually, the intrepid Seth Frank finds his way to Kate's doorstep. When he's not prodding for information about her notorious father, he's clumsily flirting with her. ("Did I mention that I live alone?" he asks her three times in one visit.) We can certainly understand Seth's attraction: Linney is an amiable, comely actress. But I'm not sure why Eastwood didn't opt to fill the part with his real-life daughter, Allison, who's spotted briefly as a fellow art student at the beginning of the film. The last time the two worked together was in the overwrought potboiler Tightrope, and although Allison's role was substantial and generated some positive notices, I can't recall her having done anything else since. That's a pity because she's a resplendent beauty with great screen presence. 

As the story rushes forward (the movie is briskly paced, but way too long), Luther prepares to split town, but before he can take off, he catches sight of President Richmond in a live broadcast on the idiot box. In a calculated maneuver to assuage any stray suspicions, Richmond (dabbing away crocodile tears) offers Sullivan his condolences and embraces him before God and country. Luther glares at the screen in disgust. "You heartless whore," he snarls. "I'm not about to run from you."

What follows is an intermittently exciting game of cat and mouse as the Secret Service shadows Luther about town unaware that he has infiltrated their web of security. The requisite action-filled set pieces are woefully uninspired and unimaginatively staged, but, of course, it's the acting (save Miss Davis) in Absolute Power that generates the real thrills. Hackman, Harris and Glenn, three of Hollywood's most dependable supporting and primary players, are uniformly excellent. The pockmark-faced Jenkins and war-horse Marshall have some big moments, too. But it's Eastwood who makes the deepest impression. Sometimes his understated and economical (read: unpretentious) style of acting makes it easy for the press to overlook his talent in lieu of showier work. It's true that's he's not as flashy or emotive an actor as, say, Anthony Quinn, but unlike the theater, the screen is more accommodating to a more cerebral performer like Eastwood. Can you conceive of another actor who could've pulled off a serene, contemplative performance like Frank Morris in Escape from Alcatraz without seeming deathly dull? When the great Robert De Niro tried for something more reserved and unobtrusive in The Last Tycoon and Falling in Love, he put the audience to sleep. Eastwood, conversely, has so much presence that he can hold an audience riveted by doing very little. It should please his detractors, though, that Eastwood has been giving more of himself to the camera in his golden years. Films like In the Line of Fire and The Bridges of Madison County have revealed a deeper, less callused and more complex man beneath the stoical surface. (He seems less reticent about smiling, too.) As he gracefully advances in years, Absolute Power represents the culmination of wisdom Eastwood has acquired as an actor throughout his distinguished career. But as a director, he'll have to toil a bit harder next time if he wishes to approximate the ingeniousness of Unforgiven.

February 21, 1997

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.