Absolute Power (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A career thief witnesses a horrific crime involving the U.S. President.
Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, and Laura Linney.

This is another one I knew nothing about before my movie challenge. I didn't even know it was a Clint Eastwood movie. A lot of his films tend to be pretty straightforward crime stories with one or two interesting twists -- not twist endings, but sideways angles of looking at things. Here, the relationship Eastwood's character has with his daughter (played by Laura Linney) is probably the strongest element. On one level, it's just a combination of the "innocent man witnesses a crime" trope and the "criminals too powerful to be brought down" trope, but then that father-daughter relationship grounds it in a way that makes the rest of it work. It brings out the question of trust in some of the other film relationships, as Eastwood trusts his daughter even to his own detriment, but these themes never feel overt or excessive. They're just neatly tucked beneath a much more standard plot, hinting that they're there so I leave still thinking about them.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Absolute Power > Gifted
Absolute Power < Quartet
Absolute Power > Lo
Absolute Power < The Ladykillers (2004)
Absolute Power < The Call
Absolute Power < Thor
Absolute Power > Meet John Doe
Absolute Power < Lucky Number Slevin
Absolute Power > Nine to Five
Absolute Power < Gandhi

Final spot: #1003 out of 2750.