Absence of Malice is a film that explores the way federal law enforcement and the media can conspire to libel individuals they want to harass.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Paul Newman is Mike Gallagher a liquor wholesaler in Miami. He’s also the son of a former bootlegger. And because of his social connections through his father the Justice Department is intent on having him provide evidence on a murder case that they are convinced was a mob hit.
Prosecutor Elliot Rosen conspires to convince newspaper reporter Megan Carter (played by Sally Field) that the FBI has evidence that Gallagher was responsible for the murder. She publishes a front-page story to that effect and Mike’s life starts falling apart. The longshoreman’s union boycotts his business because the murdered man was a member of their union. Then Mike finds himself followed around by organized crime henchmen who fear he will turn on them.
Mike goes to Megan’s office and demands to know who told her that he was a murderer. She refuses on the grounds that it’s privileged information. But she’s interested in Mike and begins an odd relationship with him. She meets a friend of Mike’s named Teresa Perrone who can vouch for the fact that Mike was out of town with her when the murder occurred. While checking on Teresa’s story she discovers that Teresa was out of town to have an abortion. And Teresa is a practicing Catholic and works for the Catholic Church so the abortion is a source of great shame to her.
Megan’s boss convinces her to include the abortion as part of the story that she writes on Mike. Reading the story, Teresa commits suicide out of the shame she feels for the abortion being revealed. Mike is enraged at the betrayal that Megan committed against Teresa and when Megan comes to apologize, he roughs her up. She gives Elliot Rosen’s name to Mike to atone for her betrayal.
Using the information that Megan gave him Mike begins a deception of his own. He contacts Rosen’s boss District Attorney James Quinn and convinces him that if Quinn gives a public exoneration of him then Mike will provide him with all the information on the mob hit. But when Rosen sees what’s going on he assumes Quinn has been bribed by Mike and begins an unauthorized and illegal investigation of both of them. Mike feeds this false narrative by making anonymous donations to a charity that Rosen knows is affiliated with Quinn.
Finally, a friend of Megan’s in the FBI warns her to stay away from Mike because of an impending arrest of Quinn and Mike. She then publishes a story of the false narrative and the Justice Department steps in. Assistant Attorney General James Wells in charge of organized crime (played masterfully by Wilford Brimley) convenes an interview at which all the principals (Mike, Megan, Rosen and Quinn) are present and sorts through the mess. He figures out that Mike has orchestrated this public relations disaster for both the government and the newspaper as revenge for their unscrupulous use of misinformation to libel him and try to force him to become a government informant.
Rosen and Quinn lose their jobs, Megan’s paper has to print an apology and retraction and Megan is chastened for her bad judgement. At the end of the movie Mike and Megan meet and somewhat reconcile before he leaves Florida for some new stage in his life.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie. Above and beyond the topicality to our time of FBI/Media collusion, the characterization of Mike as the wronged citizen strikes a very sympathetic chord that Newman pulls off perfectly. This movie is almost unique in Hollywood history in not making the crusading reporters and G-men heroes. Here the FBI are the bad guys harassing the little guy who is just trying to live his life. The newspaper reporters are shown to be callous and without empathy for their subjects. This is an excellent movie for our time.