Years after first seeing the movie I just finished David Baldacci's book, Absolute Power. I have to say that reading the book revealed the most egregious case of a Hollywood movie departing in almost every particular from the book on which the movie is purportedly based. In the movie, Clint Eastwood plays the main protagonist (jewel thief Luther Whitney) while in the book he is an important, but supporting character - oh and he is killed in the book. So is the character played by E. G. Marshall. And most interesting of all, the book's main character ( a young lawyer representing Clint's character) and a large number of characters surrounding him are nowhere to be found in the movie. One of the co-main stories is the lawyer's (Jack Graham) struggle to get along with the rich bitch he's engaged to while at the same time trying to reconcile with old flame Kate Whitney, Luther's daughter and played by Laura Linney in the movie.
The book begins with Luther breaking into a mansion to cop some goodies from the safe of tycoon Walter Sullivan (E. G. Marshall) when, out of the blue in pop's Sullivan's much younger wife for a little belly bumping with a guy who turns out to be POTUS. To avoid getting nabbed, Luther locks himself in the safe from where he witnesses, through a one-way mirror, a drunken POTUS beat the crap out of Mrs. Sullivan. Well, the lady takes offense at the beating and is about to take her revenge on the most powerful man in the world with a letter opener when she is blown away by a couple Secret Service agents. The President's chief of staff, Gloria Russell, orders the Secret Service guys to clean the place up and make it look like a break-in gone bad. But in their cleanup, they left that pesky letter opener behind. Luther escapes, with the goods and the incriminating letter opener (got the President's DNA on it) and leads the authorities on a merry chase.
The cops eventually catch up to old Luther and he is charged with killing Mrs. Sullivan. In comes Jack Graham who represents Luther who he knows from his days dating Kate. Also welcome in one Seth Frank, a homicide detective from Sullivan's exclusive community who investigates the crime and comes to find many inconsistencies in the evidence. He eventually comes to doubt Luther's guilt and even begins to like the old guy. Well, Luther is killed on his way to being arraigned by a hitman hired by Sullivan (who is killed as part of the White House coverup).
In case anyone wants to read the book I'll avoid spoilers by saying that after a number of twists and turns, the evil doers are brought down by the good guys. POTUS is NOT forced to commit suicide by Sullivan as he was in the movie.
I'll end by saying that the only similarities between book and movie are the character names, the opening murder scene and good guys win.