Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

grantss Megan, a newspaper reporter, is leaked information by the local DA's office that Michael Gallagher, the nephew of a mob boss, is being investigated for the disappearance of a senior union organiser. After some token checks, she prints the story. This has significantly adverse effects on Gallagher's business and life. Desperate to clear his name, he starts to play them at their own game.Good, clever drama. Intriguing plot with some interesting themes. In particular the movie shows the lengths the media will go for a story, the lack of caring for the truth or anyone they harm and, most importantly, the manipulative power of the media.Not as profound as it could have been, however. Conclusion lacks punch.Great work by Paul Newman and Sally Field in the lead roles with good support from Melinda Dillon. Newman and Dillon got Oscar nominations for their efforts.

tieman64 A reversal of "All The President's Men", Sydney Pollack's "Absence of Malice" sees an overzealous prosecutor leaking information to a young reporter (Sally Field). The leak involves Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman), a liquor wholesaler whose father had a criminal past and mob affiliations. When Field publishes her story, which implicates Gallagher in the murder of a unionist, Gallagher challenges her. He believes he was unfairly slandered.Unlike "All the President's Man", which saw valiant media-men carving through lies and half truths to get at facts (thereby rightfully exposing and incriminating), "Absence of Malice" thus does the opposite. Here, journalists and prosecutors trade in lies, half-truths and skirt around laws. Meanwhile, the film's victims are innocent businessmen who are wrongly accused of bullying unions. The film's title refers to a by-law which essentially allows journalists to "do wrong" if they can sufficiently prove that they harboured no ill intentions.Like most of Pollack's films, "Malice" is overlong, simply shot and drags.7/10 – Worth one viewing.

bobsgrock Absence of Malice isn't so much about duplicitous news reporting as it is about the consequences it results in. I suppose, due to the events that take place in this film, that we should feel somewhat betrayed by the media for foregoing the rights of privacy and jumping to conclusions they are still vague on. Nevertheless, Sally Field's reporter comes out somewhat heroic in this movie if only because of her ability to attract the protagonist, Paul Newman's nephew of a Mafia boss with his past and reputation hanging over his present situation. He's a nice enough guy, so if he likes this impetuous reporter, so do we.The result is a well-made, if somewhat erroneous story about the DA office, the newspaper, and a simple liquor salesman and how they all try to do their jobs in the wrong way. The acting is just fine here, especially from Newman who creates a sympathetic man trying to crawl out of the shadow of his family and play it straight in the real world. The scene-stealer is Wilford Brimley as the assistant attorney general who eventually is forced to come down to sunny Miami and sort out this whole mess. His few lines bring the film to a wonderful, funny conclusion.For director Sydney Pollack, this is a bit of a different stroke of the brush. He gives adequate time to discussions about the investigation and the ramifications it will bring. In the end, you get a strong sense of how these type of situations work and though the motives and actions of some of the characters, especially Sally Field's reporter, are highly questionable, as an entertaining story about the media and its interaction with the real world. It's actually amazing the parallels drawn between news reporting and criminal investigation.

moonspinner55 Sydney Pollack is a solid, workman-like director who doesn't like to underline key moments with ostentation, he doesn't belabor certain points--and his pictures usually move along quite freely as a result. But with "Absence of Malice", he seems to have taken a page from Alan J. Pakula's film manual--"All the President's Men", in particular--and has slowed the pacing down to a crawl. Pollack also works well with his actors, yet this time he gets nothing at all interesting from Sally Field, cast as an overeager newspaper reporter who ruins an innocent working man's life with hearsay stories about him being involved with the Mafia. Paul Newman does a bit better as the target of her slander, and Melinda Dillon is very affecting as an emotionally-frail friend of Newman's who is maligned by proxy (both were Oscar-nominated). Still, the picture is mechanical, with a quasi-romantic subplot shoehorned in which doesn't make much sense (except to soften the squabbling characters). It doesn't even have a fresh, interesting look--just the same old visual clichés--and Pollack's reluctance to cut scenes down after their drama has played out slowly wears down the audience. *1/2 from ****