I'm not at all surprised to see so many reviewers utterly failed to 'get' this film. Given the charismatic big-name stars and the sunny Miami setting, they can be forgiven for expecting to see some sort of conventional romantic cops-and-robbers buddy flick. She's the tough reporter; he's the murder suspect. They have every reason to hate each other - yet they're drawn irresistibly together...! Predictable soaper ensues.
But this is definitely NOT that movie. The irresistible Sally Fields plays an utterly despicable character: a reporter whose greed for the big scoop over-rides all other considerations, and whose unforgivable stupidity leads to several ruined lives. Government investigators - led by Bob Balaban, in a brilliantly slimy performance - exploit Fields to demolish Newman's reputation. It's a sordid tale, with no admirable characters. Newman is the most sympathetic, but he too plays hardball, forgiving nothing, giving nothing away - and even becoming shamefully violent (albeit only when pushed beyond all human endurance by Fields' thoughtlessly destructive actions).
The film is built on several kinds of misdirection. While the story is ostensibly a battle of wills between Newman, Fields and Balaban, Pollack uses it to quietly unfold a moral puzzle. How can people like Fields do so much harm while always thinking they're doing the right thing? And while Balaban seems to be the villain (and is certainly no nice guy), the real evil is represented by a bland, conventional background character whom you'll barely notice the first time through. Fields' editor is a quiet, buttoned-down nice guy, full of fatherly platitudes about journalism. But he's the one who's absolutely certain he's doing good, while actually having no regard for any point of view but his own. And he's the one who epitomizes what's wrong with modern journalism: its willingness to report assertions by self-interested parties as if they were fact.
Don't be fooled: this is a serious, challenging film. It offers no easy answers, and asks viewers to consider tough moral choices. But it's also one of my personal favorites: a perfectly constructed ethical Rubik's Cube, which solves itself with the inevitability and precision of some fine mechanism. And it's definitely worth seeing just for Wilford Brimley's delicious scene at the end - reminiscent of the little dinner parties at the end of the Thin Man movies, or of the entry of Fortinbras, cleaning up the corpses at the end of Hamlet.
But this is definitely NOT that movie. The irresistible Sally Fields plays an utterly despicable character: a reporter whose greed for the big scoop over-rides all other considerations, and whose unforgivable stupidity leads to several ruined lives. Government investigators - led by Bob Balaban, in a brilliantly slimy performance - exploit Fields to demolish Newman's reputation. It's a sordid tale, with no admirable characters. Newman is the most sympathetic, but he too plays hardball, forgiving nothing, giving nothing away - and even becoming shamefully violent (albeit only when pushed beyond all human endurance by Fields' thoughtlessly destructive actions).
The film is built on several kinds of misdirection. While the story is ostensibly a battle of wills between Newman, Fields and Balaban, Pollack uses it to quietly unfold a moral puzzle. How can people like Fields do so much harm while always thinking they're doing the right thing? And while Balaban seems to be the villain (and is certainly no nice guy), the real evil is represented by a bland, conventional background character whom you'll barely notice the first time through. Fields' editor is a quiet, buttoned-down nice guy, full of fatherly platitudes about journalism. But he's the one who's absolutely certain he's doing good, while actually having no regard for any point of view but his own. And he's the one who epitomizes what's wrong with modern journalism: its willingness to report assertions by self-interested parties as if they were fact.
Don't be fooled: this is a serious, challenging film. It offers no easy answers, and asks viewers to consider tough moral choices. But it's also one of my personal favorites: a perfectly constructed ethical Rubik's Cube, which solves itself with the inevitability and precision of some fine mechanism. And it's definitely worth seeing just for Wilford Brimley's delicious scene at the end - reminiscent of the little dinner parties at the end of the Thin Man movies, or of the entry of Fortinbras, cleaning up the corpses at the end of Hamlet.