An Innocent Man

You'll cheer, you'll laugh, you'll bite your nails and feel your heart pounding right up there under your crewcut. Read full review

An Innocent Man is no White Heat, and Selleck is no James Cagney. But this kind of fast-paced entertainment is almost top of the world, ma. [06 Oct 1989, p.5D]

An Innocent Man isn't an inspired piece of filmmaking, but it is tightly focused and efficient, and on its own modest terms it is effective. Read full review

An Innocent Man is a fairly effective melodramatic thriller, and the prison scenes are powerful. [06 Oct 1989, p.3E]

The plot is almost as old as Hollywood itself, yet the film's ironic, cynical tone gives the material a new spin under the direction of veteran Peter Yates. The script is savvy about the power structures both inside and outside the prison gates, and the fine cast makes the most of the well-crafted dialog and sharply drawn characters. Read full review

This 1989 movie looks much of the time like an old idea that's been too enthusiastically colorized. The prison sequences work best, and they seem almost like a completely separate film. Read full review

An Innocent Man might have been a decent enough study of justice gone horribly awry -- if the screenplay weren't so crudely manipulative, if the bad cops weren't such cardboard villains and if the title character had been played by a more appropriate (and better) actor than Tom Selleck. [06 Oct 1989, p.G4]

Its logic is so simple, its emotion is so heartfelt, its editing and composition are so fluid, it seems to be a perfectly-crafted contemporary drama. Yet, in retrospect, it's a difficult movie to stomach. The problem with Brothers' script is that he and Yates paint characters with unbelievably broad strokes. [06 Oct 1989, p.12]

Outdated and predictable revenge saga. Read full review

An Innocent Man has all the elements to put us through an emotional wringer, but the movie never works up any enthusiasm for them. It's the most relaxed crime movie of the year. Read full review

More than enough sadism to go around. But the net effect is less excitement than overkill. The screenplay, by Larry Brothers, has a tendency to forget old plot elements as it picks up new ones. Read full review

This cautionary thriller about an unjustly imprisoned airline mechanic has a chance to be a canny blend of gutsy melodrama and J'Accuse against the prison system. But, by the end, it has gone as slick and corrupt as the crafty old con (F. Murray Abraham) who advises Tom Selleck's framed Jimmie Rainwood on jail survival. On a fundamental moral level, An Innocent Man is guilty as hell. Read full review

With the exception of Abraham's world-weary performance, and a couple of nicely nasty cameos from David Rasche and Richard Young as the crooked cops, this is a disposable affair. Yates' ham-fisted direction cranks the film up into melodramatic hyperbole, but Selleck is the real villan, portraying his transformation from wide-eyed innocent to hardened man of the world by changing from clean-shaven mop top to stubbly slicked-back, with reflecting shades to boot. Laughable. Read full review

Plot ain't where it's at here. An Innocent Man is guilty as charged and innocent as hell. [06 Oct 1989]

This collection of cliches accomplishes the almost unthinkable by bringing the prison genre to a new low. Read full review