Malice - 1993 film review

Malice is a well-known film, released over 30 years ago, but it's taken me a long time to get round to watching it. When I did, I found it twisty if improbable, and it certainly benefits from the quality of a cast that includes Anne Bancroft in a memorable if minor role as well as George C. Scott and Gwyneth Paltrow in smallish, but significant, parts. The key roles, however, are those of Nicole Kidman, Alec Baldwin, and Bill Pullman.

The screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank uses as minor ingredients plotlines that, in other hands, would be central to a movie. At first, this seems to be a story about a serial killer who is targeting young female students. Pullman plays Andy Safian, an academic at a local college who is recently married to Tracy (Kidman at her most glamorous). He is briefly a suspect after one of his students (Paltrow) falls victim to the murderer. But we know he's innocent. 

There's a separate strand involving a charismatic doctor, Jed Hill (Baldwin), who is new to the area. He turns out to be an old school colleague of Andy's and when Andy invites Jed to stay in the house he and Tracy have acquired, we start to wonder if this might be some kind of home invasion thriller, especially given that Andy seems to have his eye on Tracy. But no, that's not what this film is about.

Tracy's medical problems turn out to be central to the storyline. This is, however, definitely a film in which nothing is as it seems. There are quite a few plot holes, when you come to think about it afterwards, but the pace of the action is enough to disguise some at least of the improbabilities. So while Malice isn't a masterpiece, it's a pretty effective light thriller, still just about good enough to keep me engrossed after all this time.