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Malice (film) |
| Malice | |
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| Directed by | Harold Becker |
| Produced by | Charles Mulvehill Rachel Pfeffer |
| Written by | Aaron Sorkin Scott Frank |
| Starring | Alec Baldwin Nicole Kidman Bill Pullman Peter Gallagher Bebe Neuwirth Josef Sommer Anne Bancroft George C. Scott Ken Cheeseman |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Editing by | David Bretherton |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures Castle Rock Entertainment New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | October 1, 1993 |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million (estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Malice is a film written by Aaron Sorkin, Jonas McCord and Scott Frank. The movie was directed by Harold Becker and stars Nicole Kidman, Alec Baldwin, and Bill Pullman. The film was released on October 1, 1993.
Contents |
Malice tells the story of Andy and Tracy Safian, a happily married couple living a peaceful life in a sleepy suburb of Boston, and who want to have children. Andy (Pullman) is the Associate Dean of the local college, while Tracy (Kidman) teaches art to kids. They live in and are restoring a Victorian home with bad plumbing. A young boy, whose mother is a nurse on the late shift, seems to watch them having sex from his bedroom while he plays on his keyboard.
A young student is attacked by a serial rapist. Her life is saved by a new doctor, Dr. Jed Hill (Baldwin). Needing money to fix the plumbing, Andy invites Jed to lodge with them. As a side issue, Tracy has been suffering terrible pains and has been secretly taking medication.
Another student (Gwyneth Paltrow) is attacked and killed. Since Andy found the body, police detective Dana Harris (Bebe Neuwirth) asks for a sample of his semen. At the police station, Andy learns that his wife is in hospital. Jed operates on Tracy and saves her life. He finds out that she is pregnant; he also notices that her ovaries are torsed and appear necrotic. Jed asks Andy to make the decision on whether they should be removed (thus negating any chance of her ever becoming pregnant again). Over the protests of the other doctors, Jed opts not to wait for tests but removes her ovaries. In doing so, the fetus aborts. Afterwards, Jed is told that the ovaries were, in fact, healthy. Jed decides not to bury the report but instead to face the consequences of his actions.
At a deposition, Jed's attorney realizes that Jed acted wrongly - and had been drinking the night of the surgery. Thereafter, Jed's insurance company settles with Tracy for $20 million. She also leaves Andy, whom she blames for the loss of her ovaries.
Andy discovers the identity of the serial rapist and apprehends him. Later, Dana tells him that his semen sample was sterile; the child could not have been his. Andy tells this to Jed, no longer a doctor, but Jed isn’t interested because either way, he is responsible for Tracy's infertility. Andy confronts Tracy’s lawyer, Dennis Riley (Peter Gallagher), and accuses him of fraud. Riley denies this, but lets slip that Tracy’s mother, whom Andy thought was dead, is still alive.
Tracy’s mother, Mrs. Kennsinger (Anne Bancroft), tells Andy the truth about her sweet little daughter: She is a con artist. Mrs. Kennsinger says that Tracy had a relationship with a wealthy man who paid her to have an abortion, but Tracy kept the money and had it done illegally. The mother also confirms Andy's suspicion that Tracy was pregnant by a "Dr. David Lilianfield". Andy follows the trail to a cliff top house where he finds Tracy living with Jed.
Andy returns home and trashes Tracy's vanity table in a fit of anger. Amid the mess, he discovers an important clue: a hypodermic needle containing the fertility drug Perganol. He later concludes that Jed had given Tracy injections, and prescribed pills, so she could fake her illness, then twisted the healthy ovaries with his hands. But Tracy doubled her money by also being pregnant. Tracy agrees to meet Andy and puts on all her charm. But Andy is now on to them, and he tells her he wants half the money or he’s going to the cops. Andy also hints that there was a witness -- he implies that the young boy next door watched her and Jed from his bedroom window.
Jed tries to stop Tracy from killing the kid, but she shoots Jed dead. Tracy goes to the boy’s house and smothers him with cellophane, but it’s only a dummy. Dana arrives and arrests Tracy. As she is taken away, the boy and his mother arrive back. When the boy steps out of the car, it is apparent he is blind, and thus he couldn't have witnessed anything.
Alec Baldwin has had many "movie-stealing scenes" for their memorability and impact. This movie has two such monologues.
The first comes from an early scene, after Jed saves the life of the first rape victim during emergency surgery:
| “ | "I'm the new guy around here and I want to make friends, so I'll say this to you and we'll start fresh. If you don't like my jokes, don't laugh. If you have a medical opinion, then please speak up and speak up loud. But if you ever again tell me or my surgical staff that we're going to lose a patient, I'm gonna take out your lungs with a fuckin' ice cream scoop. Do you understand me?" | ” |
Later, during a pre-trial deposition, Jed responds to Dennis Riley's accusations that his arrogance may have led to professional incompentence, which resulted in Tracy's condition:
| “ | "I have an M.D. from Harvard. I am board certified in cardiothoracic medicine and trauma surgery. I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you: When someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn't miscarry, or that their daughter doesn't bleed to death, or that their mother doesn't suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they're praying to?
Now, go ahead and read your Bible, Dennis! And you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you're looking for God, he was in operating room number two on November seventeenth, and he doesn't like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something -- I am God." |
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Many consider this a classic Sorkin monologue, among other reasons for containing a Gilbert and Sullivan reference ("never, ever sick at sea" is a line from H.M.S. Pinafore). The 'board certified' section is also echoed by an affronted First Lady (Stockard Channing) in The West Wing.
Another memorable line comes when Andy shows up at Dennis's office unannounced, accusing him of fraud -- and of sleeping with Tracy -- after learning the baby she miscarried was not his.
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (June 2007) |
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This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (March 2007) |
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