Starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Judy Davis Directed by Clint Eastwood Rated R, with violence, profanity and sex Running time 118 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 6 out of 10

(Feb. 13, 1997) -- Filmmaker Clint Eastwood is justifiably famous for making films as lean, rock-solid and efficient as his public persona. There is no wasted motion in the man -- or his movies.

In his new political thriller, Absolute Power, Eastwood's trademark leanness is both a blessing and a curse.

First, the good news: Eastwood and his esteemed veteran screenwriter William Goldman have fashioned a film that cuts a lot of the secondary characters and subplots from David Baldacci's overly plump best-selling novel. Mostly, there is one story here, and it's the story that counts.

In it, Eastwood plays aging jewel thief Luther Whitney, who has organizing a big, presumably final, score. He is going to burglarize a lavish mansion in the Virginia suburbs near Washington. Its owner, an 80-year-old business tycoon and power broker named Sullivan, and his gorgeous young trophy wife, Christy, are supposedly on an annual vacation in the Bahamas.

But as Luther is cleaning out the large walk-in vault off the Sullivans' bedroom, he hears noise. Through the vault's elaborate two-way mirror he can observe the bedroom without being noticed. Christy Sullivan apparently didn't accompany her husband on vacation, and she has arrived home with another man for a tryst.

To Luther's horror, the sex turns rough. Even more horrifying, Luther recognizes the man. Who wouldn't? It is U.S. President Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman).

As the violence escalates, the woman begins to fight back and stabs the president in the arm with a letter opener. When he screams, two Secret Service agents jump into the room and empty their service revolvers into the scantily clad young woman.

Luther has just witnessed a murder involving the President of the United States.

Richmond's chief of staff, Gloria Russell (Judy Davis), also runs into the room, immediately sizes up the political ramifications and puts a major cover-up into motion. Eventually, she and the Secret Service agents realize their actions have been witnessed -- and they're shocked when they learn the witness even has proof: The bloodied letter opener, ripe with President Richmond's fingerprints.

Absolute Power follows Luther as he goes into hiding, then changes his mind and decides to try to bring down the slimy, oversexed and opportunistic chief executive.

Meanwhile, Luther also is a target. Russell and the two Secret Service agents want him. And the cops want him because they think a burglar committed the murder. Homicide detective Seth Frank (Ed Harris) knows Luther Whitney is on the short "A-list" of thieves sophisticated enough to break through the heavy security at the Sullivan mansion.

Luther also is estranged from his daughter, a county prosecutor named Kate (Laura Linney) who has never forgiven her father for his chosen "profession" or for being in prison during most of her formative years. As the police use Kate to help trap her father, the daughter is forced to confront her feelings about him.

Eastwood stages most of his own sequences with an admirable economy, putting the emphasis where it belongs, on character and dialogue. (The few scenes between Ed Harris and Eastwood are especially riveting -- the two actors push each other to top-flight work.)

He has less success, though, in the scenes with the heavies. The Secret Service agents (Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert) are not well defined. Glenn's character offers a suggestion he'll complicate matters by developing a conscience, but that theme is never sufficiently explored. Haysbert's character remains a cold-hearted cipher.

Gene Hackman and Judy Davis also struggle a bit with undeveloped characters; as a result, their biggest scene together (dancing and plotting at a White House ball) goes over the top.

Eastwood's streamlined minimalist approach backfires in the presidential scenes. For the power of the presidency -- the Absolute Power -- to have impact, the president must be depicted at the center of a swirl of staff, activities and meetings. Here we seldom see him accompanied by anyone other than the same two Secret Service agents and chief of staff Russell -- and we never see him being "presidential."

We needed to see a corrupt variation of the kind of chief executive we saw n The American President. Then the film's drama would have had more impact and the suspense would have been more riveting.

Screenwriter Goldman, who generated so many shocking twists in Marathon Man, fails to deliver any surprises here. When President Richmond must finally confront his fate, it seems more an afterthought than an earth-shattering, historic moment.

Eastwood and Goldman are too skillful as craftsmen to make a bad movie. At times, Absolute Power is a very good movie, an astute entertainment that escalates the national debate about morality in high places to melodrama.

But the film lacks the consistency, depth and suspense that would put it in a league with Eastwood's best work.