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.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/p>\n
Paul Newman is Mike Gallagher a liquor wholesaler in Miami.\u00a0 He\u2019s also the son of a former bootlegger.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 She publishes a front-page story to that effect and Mike\u2019s life starts falling apart.\u00a0 The longshoreman\u2019s union boycotts his business because the murdered man was a member of their union.\u00a0 Then Mike finds himself followed around by organized crime henchmen who fear he will turn on them.<\/p>\n
Mike goes to Megan\u2019s office and demands to know who told her that he was a murderer.\u00a0 She refuses on the grounds that it\u2019s privileged information.\u00a0 But she\u2019s interested in Mike and begins an odd relationship with him.\u00a0 She meets a friend of Mike\u2019s named Teresa Perrone who can vouch for the fact that Mike was out of town with her when the murder occurred.\u00a0 While checking on Teresa\u2019s story she discovers that Teresa was out of town to have an abortion.\u00a0 And Teresa is a practicing Catholic and works for the Catholic Church so the abortion is a source of great shame to her.<\/p>\n
Megan\u2019s boss convinces her to include the abortion as part of the story that she writes on Mike.\u00a0 Reading the story, Teresa commits suicide out of the shame she feels for the abortion being revealed.\u00a0 Mike is enraged at the betrayal that Megan committed against Teresa and when Megan comes to apologize, he roughs her up. \u00a0She gives Elliot Rosen\u2019s name to Mike to atone for her betrayal.<\/p>\n
Using the information that Megan gave him Mike begins a deception of his own.\u00a0 He contacts Rosen\u2019s 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.\u00a0 But when Rosen sees what\u2019s going on he assumes Quinn has been bribed by Mike and begins an unauthorized and illegal investigation of both of them.\u00a0 Mike feeds this false narrative by making anonymous donations to a charity that Rosen knows is affiliated with Quinn.<\/p>\n
Finally, a friend of Megan\u2019s in the FBI warns her to stay away from Mike because of an impending arrest of Quinn and Mike.\u00a0 She then publishes a story of the false narrative and the Justice Department steps in.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Rosen and Quinn lose their jobs, Megan\u2019s paper has to print an apology and retraction and Megan is chastened for her bad judgement.\u00a0 At the end of the movie Mike and Megan meet and somewhat reconcile before he leaves Florida for some new stage in his life.<\/p>\n
I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This movie is almost unique in Hollywood history in not making the crusading reporters and G-men heroes.\u00a0 Here the FBI are the bad guys harassing the little guy who is just trying to live his life.\u00a0 The newspaper reporters are shown to be callous and without empathy for their subjects.\u00a0 This is an excellent movie for our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[43,210,38,1355,1849],"class_list":["post-19846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-movie-review","tag-paul-newman","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-wilford-brimley"],"yoast_head":"\n