Sightlines · reception
How Absence of Malice was received
1981 · Sydney Pollack · Absence of Malice on Sightlines
The arc
In 1981 it landed as a pointed counter-punch to the post-Watergate glow of All the President's Men, and working journalists bristled at its portrait of a reckless press; today it's settled in as the journalism-ethics teaching text — the film j-schools screen when they want students to squirm.
What’s debated
Film fans (and reporters) still argue over whether it's a fair critique of journalism or a prosecutor-turned-screenwriter's hit job that no real newsroom would recognize.
Its footprint
Wilford Brimley strolls in for one late scene as a DOJ official and walks off with the entire movie — 'Wonderful thing, a subpoena' — routinely cited among the great scene-stealing single-scene performances.
Where it stands
A beloved-but-half-forgotten entry in the Newman and Pollack filmographies, kept alive by journalism classrooms and by everyone who shows up just for the Brimley scene.
Did you know? Screenwriter Kurt Luedtke was a real newspaperman — a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press — and this, his first produced screenplay, earned him an Oscar nomination (Newman and Melinda Dillon were nominated too).