With Jim Sabatini

Malice

Rated: R for sex and violence.
Reviewed by: Frank
Release date: October 1, 1993	Released by: Castle Rock Entertainment

Filled with twists and turns, some of which have nothing to do with the plot, Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman star is a thriller which explores the "God Complex" which some doctors are said to possess. Pullman is a low level administrator at a New England College. His wife (Kidman) volunteers at the college day care center and hopes for a child of her own. Along comes Baldwin, a high school friend of Pullman's who is the new hot shot surgeon at the local hospital. He is also quite a ladies' man an is obvious about it. When Kidman is forced to have emergency surgery which Baldwin performs, she loses her ability to have children. From there Pullman must figure out what happened. Why his wife has left him, why she is suing Baldwin for $20 million, and how to help the police stop a serial killer who has killed three students whom Pullman had been counseling.

It's more than one man can handle and more than one plot can credibly accept. Baldwin is very effective as the self-centered doctor, Pullman is well cast as the tweedy college administrator, and Kidman is beautiful and sexy but is strained to carry out this very complex part.

The direction is just O.K. but I wander what Hitchcock could have done with it.