More than 30 years after the movie first hit theaters, Presumed Innocent is now a limited series, and all indications suggest that it was a big hit for Apple TV+. (It was recently renewed for a second season.) Given the success of that series, it feels like the perfect time to take another look at the movie that served as the first adaptation of Scott Turow’s novel of the same name.
Presumed Innocent stars Harrison Ford as Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor in a district attorney’s office who finds himself on trial for the murder of a fellow attorney that he had an affair with. And, while the movie isn’t thought of as among Ford’s best work, and it’s not remembered particularly well in general, Presumed Innocent is far better and more interesting than you might expect it to be. Here are five reasons you should give this older adaptation a chance, even if you already watched and digested the more recent Apple TV+ series.
Harrison Ford is perfectly cast
Part of Presumed Innocent‘s conceit is that, while you’re fairly confident that Rusty didn’t kill Carolyn, you can’t be completely sure he’s, well, innocent. Few leading men of his era were more capable of playing men who were simultaneously charming and a little bit sleazy than Harrison Ford, and he uses that combination to full effect.
As the evidence mounts against him, it becomes harder and harder to know whether Rusty is really innocent or just exceptionally good at pretending to be. It’s that confusion about where our allegiances lie that makes Ford such a perfect casting choice. He feels like a plausible suspect for basically the entire movie, even as we also know that he’s the central character.
It’s the kind of movie we don’t get anymore
You hear a lot these days about how they don’t make movies for adults anymore, but the reason you hear that is because it’s mostly true. Presumed Innocent is a big, glossy, fairly high-budget movie with big stars that was made for adults. Although it has plenty of prestige behind the camera, the movie was not a major Oscar player.
Instead, it was just a thriller targeted squarely at a grown-up audience, and it works primarily on that level. It feels telling that this story was remade as a TV series, which is where a lot of these kinds of stories have moved in the past 10 years. Even so, it’s worth remembering why it can be valuable to tell some stories on a bigger canvas, often with bigger stars and an even bigger budget.
It’s surprisingly salacious
Given how chaste most modern movies are, it can be almost shocking to revisit something like Presumed Innocent and remember just how salacious some movies used to be. This ties into the idea that they just don’t make movies like this anymore, which is true, but Presumed Innocent might have stood out even in 1990 for how willing it is to discuss sex and the power dynamics between men and women.
Now, in an era when many can be overly interested in every detail of some gruesome crime, Presumed Innocent fits right in. What’s more important, though, is that the movie doesn’t shy away from the sexual nature of its premise or its characters. Instead, it seems to suggest that sex is central to everything that’s happening onscreen.
It features sterling behind-the-scenes talent
One of the reasons Presumed Innocent feels so special all these years later is that the movie was made by people who know what they’re doing. John Williams wrote the score, and while it’s not one of his five best scores, Williams doesn’t even know how to phone it in. His talents are matched by cinematographer Gordon Willis, one of the best men to ever stand behind a camera and create perfect images. In spite of its relatively mundane settings, Willis gets the most out of every moment of the movie, creating a legal thriller that has a distinctly grimy and sinister atmosphere.
All of that behind-the-scenes talent should come as no surprise when you consider that Alan J. Pakula is the man behind the camera. The director, best known for directing some of the best paranoid thrillers of the 1970s like All The President’s Men and Klute, definitely still has his fast ball, which is why there’s plenty of tension in Presumed Innocent even before you know that someone has died.
The movie’s resolution is carefully hinted at
Without spoiling it or comparing it to the limited series, suffice it to say that the ending of the 1990 version is carefully suggested throughout the movie’s runtime. What’s more, it’s a brilliant reflection of a particular moment in time when many Americans felt trapped by the marriages and relationships that they had found themselves in from a fairly young age.
The movie’s ending is designed to be at least moderately shocking, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t rewatch it and figure out exactly where it’s heading. Pakula and the actors know exactly how to drop hints, giving you a sense of who these people are, and wringing every possible moment of tension out of exchanges that might be rote in other movies.
Presumed Innocent can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime Video.
