Malice (1993).

“Playing God? I am God.”

Directed by Harold Becker

Written by Aaron Sorkin, Jonas McCord, and Scott Frank

Starring Bill Pullman, Nicole Kidman, and Alec Baldwin

The Stage.

Andy is a college dean and is married to Tracy, an art teacher. When Jed, an egotistic surgeon who used to go to school with Andy shows up, things get pretty weird. Oh, there’s also a serial killer going around killing women and stealing locks of their hair.

The Review.

Malice goes in all kinds of directions, so let’s start with the cast first. Alec Baldwin may be the third-wheel character here but he steals the show as this surgeon with a God complex. In his very first scene, he’s operating on a patient who has just suffered a brutal attack and a resident surgeon says, “We’re going to lose her, doctor.” After the surgery is over, Jed confronts him in the locker room, saying, “If you ever again tell me we’re going to lose patient, I’m gonna take out your lungs with a fuckin’ ice cream scoop.” with a cadence that made me believe that he was sent to this hospital by Mitch and Murray. And this really is the perfect introduction to this character - a damn good surgeon with a chip on his shoulder. At the hospital, Andy and Tracy run into Jed, which leads to Jed coming around and eventually moving into their empty loft on their third floor.

But wait, let me back up. The girl is in surgery because she was attacked by a serial killer who’s whacking women who go to Andy’s college. At first, you have to be thinking - okay, it’s either Andy, Jed, or Tracy who’s killing these women…and then Tobin Bell, the janitor, walks into Andy’s office and it’s like…alright, he’s the guy, and Andy’s going to be a suspect, and the rest of the movie is going to be some twisted tale that puts this college dean into a web of lies that he’s got to get out of, but that quickly evaporates when the serial killer plot abruptly stops after a young Gwenyth Paltrow is killed about 45 minutes into the film. By the way, casting department - great choice casting GOOP as a young New England liberal arts student. I bet she majored in candle making.

We also get some surgical drama, because Tracy has some kind of stomach pains that incapacitate her. Jed performs the surgery, but takes out one of her good ovaries in the process, which leads to a big lawsuit against the hospital Jed works for. And from there, the film turns into this twisty grifter noir story. It’s a pretty wild ride, if I’m being honest. Nicole Kidman is in top form as Tracy, a woman who has a lot more going for her than meets the eye. Bill Pullman is our everyman surrogate, someone getting fleeced in every direction until he gets wise and takes some advice from someone’s drunk mother. I like Pullman, but in this role he was outmatched by the Kidman/Baldwin duo and really just felt like a wet blanket.

Now, I noticed a certain crackle in a lot of the dialogue scenes, and while I watched the credits roll, I realized that it was written by Alan Sorkin. Looking back, I can absolutely see the parallels between his more recent films and the egotism at play, especially during a scene in which Alec Baldwin walks on a beach correcting grammar and staking his claim that he’s the fuckin’ man definitely feels like a prelude to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg character from The Social Network.

The End.

Malice is an interesting film and definitely one that could have made the list of ‘Top 5 Mid-Film Genre Switches’. It’s filled with red herrings, has more twists than Lombard Street, and boasts some amazing talent (and many other cameos I didn’t mention, like Peter Gallgher, Anne Bancroft, and George C. Scott). It wasn’t the erotic thriller I assumed that it was based on the cover art and the talent involved, but it’s a pretty engaging hour and a half of mid-90’s trash. If you’re interested in seeing it, Kino Lorber put out a pretty decent looking Blu-ray, albeit with zero extras.