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the question: Is anyone above the law? The moment I read the script,
which was adapted by William Goldman, I thought, This guy s a really
interesting character, Eastwood explained to the Boston Herald. He s
obviously a thrill criminal and does it for the kick of it, running the numbers
down to the end and then he gets caught in this wild situation with the
President.
I tend to pick offbeat characters like that because they re fun to play, and
yet he has some real concerns in his life, such as the relationship with his
daughter, he continued. He has his own moral code, and in his own way,
he s a moral person. He s a thief, yes, but he s not a murderer.
Though not out to make any sort of political statement, Eastwood could
not deny that the subject matter of the film would hit a nerve in America in
the years after Nixon and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. First and foremost, he
116 Clint Eastwood
was making a piece of entertainment, but he could not deny the sense of
mistrust the American people had for their government.
We want to believe that our government has our best interests at heart.
When I grew up, we thought the government was on our team. We idolized
the government agencies. The FBI, for example, was very romanticized. It
was there to protect us. Now these agencies have another image . . . the trust
of power has been lost. It reflects from the top down. I m sure the writer of
the novel based it on several presidents that were rumored to be philander-
ing. I m not going to accuse anyone. I m not interested in that kind of
stuff, he explained with some genuine regret to the Rocky Mountain Post.
After Eastwood s long and fruitful relationship with Warner Brothers, this
film was set up over at Sony Pictures, the first time Eastwood had directed a
film for another studio since the seventies. The first major challenge for the
company was locking down suitable locations in Washington, D.C., as the
city has a definitive look that Eastwood wanted for the film.
The big problem was finding locations that looked like Washington D.C.
because shooting there is so tough. There are a lot of streets you can t use
because of all the security. We shot there for In the Line of Fire, and it worked
pretty well but we filmed a minimum of scenes. So for Absolute Power we
ended up getting our establishing shots in D.C. and then moving on to
Baltimore. The rest of the logistics were pretty straightforward, he explained
to Ian Blair.
The picture allowed Eastwood to work again with Gene Hackman, whom
he had loved working with on Unforgiven (1992), and Hackman did not
hesitate this time when Eastwood offered him the role of the President.
I like working with great start-up actors like Gene who walk on the set
all ready to roll, because I m not big on rehearsal, Eastwood explained.
I like to try a scene just raw to see where it goes and what the first
impression brings to me.
With himself cast as Luther, the world-class thief, and Hackman as the
President of the United States, Eastwood rounded out the cast with
up-and-comer Laura Linney in the key role of his estranged daughter;
Ed Harris, one of the top actors in the business, as Detective Seth Frank,
who investigates the crime; Judy Davis as the President s fire-breathing
Chief of Staff; and veteran actor E.G. Marshall as billionaire Walter
Sullivan. Character actor Scott Glenn would portray one of the Secret
Service men who protects the President and is part of the cover-up and
corruption within the White House.
Once again Eastwood ran a quiet set, surprising some of his actors,
including Ed Harris, who is known for being an actor s actor and often giv-
ing various directors a difficult time in the past. Harris s greatest complaint
has been directors giving him too much direction; he prefers to be hired for
his talent and then permitted to do his job, which of course is precisely what
Eastwood allows and, frankly, expects.
Absolute Power (1997) 117
Clint didn t say a lot when we were shooting. He creates an atmosphere
of ease on the set. There s no yelling; no one s out of sorts, Harris explained
to the Rocky Mountain News.
Laura Linney, who was thrilled to be a part of an Eastwood film, praised
the director for his manner of working, calling the shoot something like a
wonderful, long sunny day not bland but easy.
The story is almost Hitchcockian in tone, with Luther Whitney, a master
thief, breaking into the home of billionaire Walter Sullivan (Marshall). When
Sullivan s much younger trophy wife comes home, interrupting the theft,
with company no less, Luther is forced to hide behind a one-way mirror
where he can see everything going on. He sees her guest is Alan Richmond,
the President of the United States, and they are going to engage in rough sex.
For her, however, Richmond gets too rough, and she is forced to defend her-
self with a letter opener. Richmond s screams bring in the Secret Service, who
shoot the defenseless woman to death. Luther watches this in horror, as they
then clean up the crime scene to make it look like a burglary gone terribly
wrong. Luther is then discovered, but not before he steals the letter opener,
which contains both the dead woman s fingerprints and the President s
blood. Forced to go on the run, and now hunted by agencies far more pow-
erful than the police, he vows to bring the murderous President down after
hearing a speech by Richmond in which the hypocrisy of the corrupt leader
standing beside his friend, the husband of the dead woman, sickens Luther.
Knowing he is being hunted by the most powerful police force on the globe,
he bravely returns to help expose the corrupt President, who is responsible for
the death of an innocent woman, the wife of the President s good friend, no
less. The investigating detective, Seth Frank (Ed Harris), is slowly piecing the
evidence together, and deduces that though there is little doubt Luther is a
thief, he is certainly not a killer.
The film moves along at a brisk clip, with strong performances in par-
ticular from Ed Harris, who spars brilliantly with Eastwood. Hackman
again portrays the nasty character in an Eastwood film and does well
enough as the President, though in the years since winning the Oscar for
Unforgiven, we had seen that sort of character again and again, yet never
as strong as he was in Eastwood s Oscar-winning Western. Revealing the
President as the villain of the film so early certainly made an impact on the
story development a fact many critics pointed toward when discussing
the film s weaknesses. Once revealed as a crook, Hackman is given very
little to do except create an arrogant and smarmy man who clearly believes
he is above the law and will get away with this crime. Laura Linney made
a nice impression as Eastwood s daughter, an interesting foreshadow of
the father-daughter relationship that would play out in Million Dollar
Baby (2004) in years to come. Linney would go on to become an Oscar
and Tony Award nominated actress, one of the best and most respected of
her generation. And Eastwood was as reliable and as wily as ever as Luther,
118 Clint Eastwood
drawing some good notices for his acting, in fact more so than for his
directing this time.
Mr. Eastwood s own performance sets a high water mark for laconic intel-
ligence and makes the star seem youthfully spry by joking so much about his
age, wrote Janet Maslin in the New York Times. Without the heft or seri-
ousness of recent Eastwood films, like A Perfect World or even The Bridges of
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