PRESUMED INNOCENT. Directed by Alan J. Pakula; written by Frank Pierson and Alan J. Pakula; produced by Sydney Pollack and Mark Rosenberg for Warner Bros. Starring Harrison Ford, Greta Scacchi, Bonnie Bedelia and Raul Julia. Rated R.
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Summertime is perfect for curling up with a nice juicy courtroom drama. And while it's hard to be quite as comfortable with a movie as with a good book, Presumed Innocent comes pretty close.
Taken from Scott Turow's 1987 best seller, it's about prosecuting attorney Rusty Sabich (Ford) who's involved too closely for comfort in a sordid murder trial.
Not all of Ford's "serious" roles (i.e., his non-Indiana Jones/Han Solo ones) have been equally satisfying, but he does a good job here with Rusty. He projects enough intelligence to be believeable as the hard-working prosecutor, and enough vulnerability to make us sympathetic as his life begins to unravel.
Scacchi plays Carolyn, Rusty's ambitious and calculating, though undeniably gorgeous, colleague; and she also happens to be the murder victim. Her intense performance, as well as her beauty, makes Rusty's obsession with her understandable. This is Scacchi's first American movie, although she's been seen here in several international films (Heat and Dust and White Mischief, for example).
Filling out the superb cast is the reliably excellent Bedelia as Rusty's wife, the reliable intriguing Julia as his defense attorney and the reliably entertaining Brian Dennehy as Rusty's boss.
This group is so good at developing their characters, and in leading them through their complicated interactions, that the story's few loopholes and improbabilities are only minor distractions.
The gross courtroom mismatch of Julia for the defense against a couple of Keystone prosecutors (played by Joe Grifagi and Tom Mardirosian) can be overlooked. That the plot is occasionally too complicated and convoluted isn't much of a problem, either, at least not until you start trying to reconstruct it afterwards.
August 8, 1990