ABSOLUTE POWER (37)

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Judy Davis

The Pitch: In the middle of a major heist, a veteran jewel-thief witnesses a murder involving the President of the United States.

Theo Sez: A lot of scarily overqualified people on automatic pilot, and a by-the-numbers thriller in which absolutely nothing makes sense. Where to begin - with the small but bizarre inconsistency which has the President apparently unaware that our hero has gotten hold of the murder weapon (he even says - and it's even repeated - that "it's not as if he [the thief] has any evidence") then, a few scenes later, knowing all about it? With the total absence of any firm plan for our hero (he just hangs around aimlessly, sending coy little signals to the villains but never telling them what if anything he wants)? With the inexplicable fact of the hired assassin (hired to avenge the dead woman's killing) targeting Eastwood even though he can't possibly have learned of our hero's connection to the case, and even though the police investigator himself doesn't think Eastwood could have committed the murder? With the ludicrous plotting by which said investigator deduces that there must have been more than one person involved in the murder yet spends the whole movie going after Eastwood, even though he knows that this particular thief always works alone? I could go on, but the point is that - after a beautifully-paced opening - this is a hollow and shockingly lazy movie. Eastwood gracefully tries to make a joke of his age, opening the movie with his veteran thief in an art-gallery surrounded by (you guessed it) Old Masters, but he can't disguise the fact that his heart is no longer in it. Like he says at one point, "We're too old to bullshit each other". Too true, Clint.