As the previews menacingly echo Lord Acton with “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the conspiracy shiver runs down your spine. Corrupt politicians and sinister cover-ups are almost always the perfect ingredients for an intense thriller.

Absolute Power has everything it should to be a terrific movie: great actors, a compelling story (David Baldacci’s novel turned screenplay by William Goldman) and superb direction. Yet, somehow, the ingredients don’t blend as perfectly as you might hope, making for a somewhat muddled finished project. The movie’s biggest drawback is that it never really addresses the absolute corruption it advertises. It lacks the face-off between hero and villain, morality and power that worked so well in movies like Clear and Present Danger.

Directing the movie, Clint Eastwood proves just how hard it is to break convention in movie-making. We expect a political thriller like Absolute Power to start with a breath-stealing action sequence. Instead, the camera, initially focusing on a collection of paintings, finds Eastwood sketching one of them (watch for Alison Eastwood’s cameo as the patronizing art student) and follows him back to his house where he has a quiet dinner studying the day’s sketches.

The uncomfortably slow opening scenes serve to remind the audience of an underlying message as they delicately build up towards the movie’s break-in: Eastwood is an artist. No matter how many movies he has directed (somewhere around 20), most of his fans still think of him only as an actor.

Absolute Power is not the first movie in which Eastwood cast himself as an artist. In The Bridges of Madison County, he played Robert Kincaid, a photographer for National Geographic Magazine. However, Absolute Power will probably be the first time his message really sinks in. Finally, Eastwood effectively shows his own duality through his character, Luther Whitney.

Whitney’s actions are calm, calculated and precise when breaking into millionaire Walter Sullivan’s house. He is more artist than thief, carefully arranging everything necessary for the burglary. Unfortunately for him, Whitney expects the Sullivans to be out of the country, an oversight that is enough to drastically change his plans.

While raiding the valuables in the mansion’s treasure room, Whitney is surprised by a drunk couple who stumble into the bedroom. Hiding behind a two-way mirror, Whitney uncomfortably watches as the couple’s rough foreplay escalates into violence. In the instant that Whitney is about to intervene, two men appear from nowhere and kill the woman, who is trying to defend herself with a letter-opener.

Whitney realizes the importance of what he has just witnessed in the confusion that ensues. The man responsible for the woman’s death is the president of the United States (Gene Hackman), the two men are Secret Service agents and the dead woman is Christy Sullivan, the wife of the President’s strongest supporter. While killing the woman could arguably have been legal in defense of the President’s life, the chief of staff (Judy Davis)’s decision to cover up the murder transforms the problem into a nightmare for all involved, especially Whitney, who finds himself framed for the murder.

As President Richmond, Gene Hackman is a poorly-developed villain. In Extreme Measures, Hackman played a physician who ignored ethics and used human subjects for his research, a character who had dimension and wasn’t entirely evil. It is almost unbelievable that a man as thoughtless and cruel as his character in Absolute Power could be supported by enough voters to win an election. To make matters worse, the role nearly cements Hackman into the type-cast role he played in No Way Out, Unforgiven, and The Quick and The Dead.

After the murder, the hypocritical Richmond holds a news conference in which he embraces Walter Sullivan and calls for a hunt to track down the murderer. Seeing the broadcast, Whitney is infuriated, but unsure of how he should handle the situation.

“Why don’t you go to the police?” asks his daughter (Laura Linney). “That’s what an innocent person would do.”

Unfortunately, Whitney is far from innocent, as investigating detective Seth Parks (Ed Harris) knows. Whitney is the only man in Washington D.C. who could have pulled off such a burglary, and Parks won’t let the fact slide. Whitney has only one chance: to turn the tables on the President, blackmailing him with evidence that he stole from the murder scene.

In the movie’s most ingenious scene, the Chief of Staff dances with the President. She thanks him for his generous gift, only to discover that the gift is really the necklace Christy Sullivan wore on the night of her murder. Realizing that Whitney sent the necklace, the couple debate how to handle the situation while smiling and pretending to laugh so spectators won’t suspect. Eastwood’s direction shines in moments like this, with a scene that plays like a Hitchcockian twist on the waltz in The American President.

Throughout the movie, Eastwood tones down the tension you would expect in such a thriller with personal scenes. The movie slows down to reflect on the understanding between Parks and Whitney and the relationship between Whitney and the daughter he hardly knows. Such mellow moments make the intense scenes stand out much more. Constantly shifting between the two brings us closer to the characters that Eastwood thinks should matter to us.

When Parks arranges for a meeting between Whitney and his daughter, Eastwood constructs a threatening atmosphere by combining the threat of multiple snipers and a platoon of policemen while a seemingly unsuspecting Whitney walks straight into the melee. Scenes such as this make the movie worthwhile, though they sometimes seem contrived.

Acting on passion only gets the characters in trouble, so the evident solution lies in a battle of the wits. It is there that the movie succeeds. When a movie divulges all its cards at the beginning by showing the audience exactly what happened, it runs the risk of a weak ending. Besides, you can’t just impale the President of the United States on a forklift or shred his body in a combine like villains in your average action movie. Absolute Power escapes these problem with a dark twist that delivers poetic justice perfectly.

The movie is definitely worth seeing and is interesting in the differences that separate it from a standard thriller. Despite its frequent displays of brilliance, the movie falls markedly short of what it aspires to be: an artistic thriller.