Presumed Innocent (1990)
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Rusty Sabich is a deputy prosecutor engaged in an obsessive affair with a coworker who is murdered. Soon after, he's accused of the crime. And his fight to clear his name becomes a whirlpool of lies and hidden passions.
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“Presumed Innocent” is a little less heated than the likes of “Klute” and “The Parallax View,” interested in a soothing tone of invasion, tracking the desperation of Sabich as his indiscretions come back to torch his life.
There's a "wrong man" angle, as seen in The Parallax View ; a sordid sexual history leading to current woes, as in Klute ; a fixation on the details of procedure, in the vein of Rollover and All the President's Men (though here the process is law, not finance or journalism); and there's a lot of energy spent looking at the protagonist's marital state, which is true in some way of about half of Pakula's films.
This adaptation of Scott Turow's best-selling novel—about an idealistic prosecutor (Harrison Ford at his best) who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a colleague (Greta Scacchi) with whom he's had an adulterous affair—is a top-notch courtroom drama that will keep you guessing if you haven't read the book; even if you have, it is still a very well crafted story, directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, All the President's Men), who collaborated on the script with Frank Pierson, and effectively shot by Gordon Willis.
Ford was born to portray taciturn, bright professional men, and Alan J Pakula was a consummate director of taut thrillers, with Klute and The Parallax View among his credits.
Based on Scott Turow's best-selling novel and directed with style by Alan J. Pakula ("Klute," "Sophie's Choice," "All the President's Men"), "Presumed Innocent" is a first-rate, intelligent thriller/courtroom drama of the kind we see all too seldom these days.
Rusty Sabich, the Midwestern prosecutor and family man who is put on trial for murder, is a contemporary cousin to all those smart but desperate film-noir schlubs (like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity) who fall for some impossibly sexy, calculating goddess a once-in-a-lifetime woman and end up giving in to desires they've repressed for years.
“Presumed Innocent” is a little less heated than the likes of “Klute” and “The Parallax View,” interested in a soothing tone of invasion, tracking the desperation of Sabich as his indiscretions come back to torch his life.
There's a "wrong man" angle, as seen in The Parallax View ; a sordid sexual history leading to current woes, as in Klute ; a fixation on the details of procedure, in the vein of Rollover and All the President's Men (though here the process is law, not finance or journalism); and there's a lot of energy spent looking at the protagonist's marital state, which is true in some way of about half of Pakula's films.
Ford was born to portray taciturn, bright professional men, and Alan J Pakula was a consummate director of taut thrillers, with Klute and The Parallax View among his credits.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Presumed Innocent), the film never shows any bad guys or showdowns, and yet it sustains a palpable sense of menace.
Pakula is good at laying out an intricate, almost mathematical series of events (his best film remains All the President's Men), but he's not big on atmosphere.
As the adapter of "Sophie's Choice" and "All the President's Men," he is certainly familiar with the process.
There's a "wrong man" angle, as seen in The Parallax View ; a sordid sexual history leading to current woes, as in Klute ; a fixation on the details of procedure, in the vein of Rollover and All the President's Men (though here the process is law, not finance or journalism); and there's a lot of energy spent looking at the protagonist's marital state, which is true in some way of about half of Pakula's films.
This adaptation of Scott Turow's best-selling novel—about an idealistic prosecutor (Harrison Ford at his best) who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a colleague (Greta Scacchi) with whom he's had an adulterous affair—is a top-notch courtroom drama that will keep you guessing if you haven't read the book; even if you have, it is still a very well crafted story, directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, All the President's Men), who collaborated on the script with Frank Pierson, and effectively shot by Gordon Willis.
Pakula has made film versions of difficult books before; " Sophie's Choice " and " All the President's Men " are among his credits.
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As the adapter of "Sophie's Choice" and "All the President's Men," he is certainly familiar with the process.
In other words, it's pretty easy to see what drew the director to the material, especially since it tended to recall his earlier, more successful films, rather than the odd little domestic films that he'd begun focusing on in the 1980s; having not made a film that made even the slightest box office since Sophie's Choice in 1982, four movies earlier.
Pakula has made film versions of difficult books before; " Sophie's Choice " and " All the President's Men " are among his credits.
Based on Scott Turow's best-selling novel and directed with style by Alan J. Pakula ("Klute," "Sophie's Choice," "All the President's Men"), "Presumed Innocent" is a first-rate, intelligent thriller/courtroom drama of the kind we see all too seldom these days.
While it never reaches the level of Anatomy of a Murder, which is probably the high point in this genre, it shares with that film a complex view of the judicial system that makes the multiple plot twists part of an overall vision, and Paul Winfield rivals Joseph Welch in the earlier film by making the most of (read hamming up) his juicy part as the judge.
There's a "wrong man" angle, as seen in The Parallax View ; a sordid sexual history leading to current woes, as in Klute ; a fixation on the details of procedure, in the vein of Rollover and All the President's Men (though here the process is law, not finance or journalism); and there's a lot of energy spent looking at the protagonist's marital state, which is true in some way of about half of Pakula's films.
The darkness largely owes to the photography by Gordon Willis (The Godfather) and the brooding lead performance by Harrison Ford, but credit director Alan J. Pakula for a Sidney Lumet-esque take on what goes on behind closed doors and in front of them in the halls of power.
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Close kin to "Fatal Attraction," but more earnestly told, it is a cautionary treatise on the wages of fooling around in the office (death for her, despair for him).
Coupled with the fact that Pakula's gentle slide into forgetting how to make movies that look interesting continued unabated - and this time, he dragged down Gordon Willis with him, their first collaboration since 1978's Comes a Horseman having none of the creativity, beauty, or moody impact of their great string of '70s visual masterpieces (Willis, it should be noted, was having a pretty rough time of the late 1980s himself) - and it's hard to see Presumed Innocent as anything but the most disposably entertainment.