Malice (film)

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Malice
Directed by Harold Becker
Produced by Charles Mulvehill
Rachel Pfeffer
Written by Aaron Sorkin
Scott Frank.
Starring Nicole Kidman
Alec Baldwin
Bill Pullman
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) October 1,1993.
Running time 106 min.
Language English
Budget $20 million (estimated)
IMDb profile
For other uses, see Malice.

Malice is a 1993 film written by Jonas McCord, Aaron Sorkin 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.

Malice tells the story of a happily married coupled who want to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy's a college professor. Things are the never same after Tracy's taken to the hospital and operated on by Jed, a "know all doctor" friend of Andy's.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Andy and Tracy Safian live a peaceful life in a sleepy suburb of Massachusetts. Andy is the principal of the local college while Tracy 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, watches 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. 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 is attacked and killed. Since Andy found the body, Detective Dana Harris 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 take the decision. Over the protests of the other doctors, Jed opts not to wait for tests but to remove 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 hearing, it is decided that Jed acted wrongly - and had been drinking to boot. Tracy is awarded $20 million. She also leaves Andy, who she blames for taking out her ovaries so she can never have children.

Andy discovers the identity of the serial rapist and apprehends him. Later, Dana Harris 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, 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, tells Andy all about her sweet little daughter; that Tracy is, in fact, a con artist. She says that Tracy had a relationship with a wealthy man who paid her to have an abortion (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 clifftop house where he finds Tracy living with Jed.

Jed had given Tracy the pills so she could fake her illness, then twisted the healthy ovaries with his hands. But Tracy doubled her money by also being pregnant. Now Andy is on to them. Tracy agrees to meet Andy and puts on all her charm. Andy tells her he wants half the money or he’s going to the cops! There’s a witness: the young boy who watched her and Jed from his bedroom window.

Jed tries to stop Tracy from killing the kid, but she shoots him 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--he couldn't have witnessed anything.

[edit] Quote

"I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic 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 seventeen, 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."

  • 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 HMS Pinafore).
  • This quote was parodied on the animated series Drawn Together, in the episode "Terms of Endearment". Wooldoor Sockbat, playing a scientist attempting to create a clone, says at one point, "You ask me if I have a God complex? I am God."
  • The line "You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God" is quoted in the Swedish metal band Persuader's song "Twisted Eyes" from their album When Eden Burns.

[edit] Trivia

  • Malice is a loose remake of a 1990 TV movie called The Operation. In the film, a doctor (Joe Penny) in a messy, emotional divorce from his wife (Kathleen Quinlan) who is also his partner in a medical clinic is suddenly slapped with a $7 million malpractice suit by a patient (Lisa Hartman) who claims he performed an unnecessary hysterectomy on her. The makers of Malice added a serial rapist and made the husband of the patient the main character. They also changed the last-minute twist: the witness is dead, not blind.
  • The original title for the film was "Damages".
  • When Aaron Sorkin was approached by Castle Rock Productions to rewrite the screenplay, he was asked for a sample of his work. All he could produce was his one-act play A Few Good Men. When Castle Rock president Rob Reiner read it, he liked it so much he filmed it in 1992 with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.
  • William Goldman was a consultant on the script.
  • Gwyneth Paltrow has a small role as one of the serial rapist's victims.
  • Nicole Kidman did her own nudity in the film.
  • This was the highest-grossing film from the Canadian animation company Nelvana. In late 1993, its US$46 million take replaced the studio record held since 1985 by The Care Bears Movie. [1]
  • In a moment Tracy asks Andy "What do you want?" and he replies "I want what everybody wants. I want the Red Sox to win the World Series". Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 after an 86-year interval.

[edit] Cast

[edit] External link

v • d • e
'The live-action films of Nelvana Limited'

Burglar (1987) - Malice (1993) - Spaceman (1997)

Partially worked on: The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) ("The Faithful Wookiee" sequence) - ¡Three Amigos! (1986) (turtle animatronics)

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