i like this one;

"James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: You had a leak? You call what's goin' on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat. "

hehehe

Journalistic ethics is one of my core interests, but Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice has structural issues that make its look at the issue more exciting. Paul Newman is the son of a late Miami gangster whose name gets smeared in the newspaper by overzealous law enforcement manipulating overzealous media (represented by Sally Field). It's easier to dirty a person's name with speculation than it is to rehabilitate it with facts (buried retractions and all that). And Newman will try to get the latter done with manipulations of its own. And I like all that, as well as the tragedies that ensue due to media's dehumanizing attitude towards "copy". But the movie tries to do too many things to jerk its audience around. Field and Newman have to have a romance (which is another ethical problem). We go from investigative journalism, to tragic drama, to a revenge story that's perhaps a little too abstract... And at the same time, the movie wants us to be paranoid about Newman's motives, and wonder whether Field's original article was accurate or not. But it's very well acted, and the climax is one of the best things I've seen Wilford Brimley do, even if he's a character we haven't seen before, stealing the leads' thunder.

where's the thrill? where's the romance? the closest to a romance was when newman&field held hands (once).. perhaps one can stick a crime-label to genres of this flick but even that would be too generous.