★★½ 

Watched 18 Apr, 2020

The second film in my endeavour to watch all of Aaron Sorkin’s (my favourite screenwriter and widely considered to be the GOAT of Screenwriting) filmography. I started with A Few Good Men a couple of weeks ago and that is a significantly better film than Malice. The best way to describe this movie is ‘predictable’, and not because of a lack of effort but because of an overenthusiasm to shock the audience. You can still find some of Sorkin’s signature ‘poetic’ dialogue but it’s nowhere as impressive as I’ve seen it be (ala The Social Network, A Few Good Men). The acting tries to distract you from how little sense this meandering plot makes. With all its twists, turns and red herrings, you’ll think that this is supposed to be some kind of game where you have to guess what happens next. And sadly, it’s very easy to guess what happens next. Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman are great but acting-wise, the showstealer is Anne Bancroft’s performance which was begging for an Oscar, but sadly this movie was not at that caliber, not even close. The cinematographer of this film, Gordon Willis (of The Godfather fame) does not disappoint and admittedly is a visually engaging film. However, no amount of shooting or great acting could hide the poorness of this script. Expected better from one of the people that inspired me to get into film. I’ll recommend this for people who want to turn their brain off for 110 mins of dumb fun and nothing more.