Presumed Innocent

Ford's bottled-up fierceness is perfectly in sync with the sustained atmosphere of quiet tension provided by director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men). Presumed Innocent is more than two hours long and has a leisurely pace, yet maintains a high level of interest most of the way. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

Intelligent, complex and enthralling, Presumed Innocent is one of those rare films where all the players seem to be in a state of grace, where the working of the machinery never shows and after it's over, one runs and reruns its intricacies with a profound sense of satisfaction. Read full review

Presumed Innocent has at its core one of the most fundamental fears of civilized man: the fear of being found guilty of a crime one did not commit. That fear is at the heart of more than half of Hitchcock's films, and it is one reason they work for all kinds of audiences. Everybody knows that fear. Read full review

A riveting adaptation of Scott Turow`s novel about a prosecutor prosecuted for murder. When this film works best, which is often, everything about it seems cramped and uptight and dark. Read full review

A rare summer movie that is both exciting and thought-provoking. [27 July 1990, p.3F]

To its credit, the ravenously awaited film version of Presumed Innocent should engross and reward two distinct audiences: Those who've read Scott Turow's 1987 best seller, and those who haven't. But remember: Engross and reward isn't quite synonymous with a cinematic trip to the moon. [27 July 1990]

Pakula has staged Presumed Innocent with gravity - reverence, almost - and makes the most of the darkly elegaic images provided by cinematographer Gordon Willis. The careful, classical stateliness of the movie, with every picture planned and in its place, is in sharp ironic contrast to the legal chaos it exposes. [27 July 1990]

A well-rigged whodunit based on the bestseller by Scott Turrow, that pretends to investigate the various political manipulations that haunt your average district attorney’s office but is in truth about the wages of sin. Read full review

Alan J. Pakula has directed an intense, enveloping, gratifyingly thorough screen adaptation of Mr. Turow's story. Mr. Pakula, who also co-wrote the film with Frank Pierson, is well suited to the job of conveying both the story's suspense and its underlying sobriety. Read full review

Honed to a riveting intensity by director Alan Pakula and featuring the tightest script imaginable, Presumed Innocent is a demanding, disturbing javelin of a courtroom murder mystery. Read full review

Presumed Innocent is a stylish, dark-toned movie with handsome photography (by Gordon Willis) and solid performances. Without exploiting the sensationalistic elements of the material, director Pakula creates a fascinating mood of impending disaster. If this movie isn't exactly exciting, it definitely holds the viewer's interest. Read full review

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. Read full review

How much you enjoy Presumed Innocent depends on whether you read Scott Turow's exhilarating legal thriller about a prosecutor charged with murdering a colleague who was briefly his lover. If you haven't, director Alan J. Pakula's adaptation will leave you dazzled and drained long before the final twist. If you have, you'll appreciate Pakula's faithful, though overly restrained, approach to Turow's 1987 novel that sold 1-million hardback copies and spent 44 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. [27 July 1990, p.6]

Even readers with reservations about the ways the film fails to measure up to the book should appreciate a smart, passionate, steadily engrossing thriller in a summer of mindless zap. Read full review

Pakula plays to Ford’s strengths, allowing the actor to use his face more than his words to convey the doubt, shame, and self-loathing Rusty experiences. The film may be more outright gripping during the courtroom scenes, but the quieter scenes between Ford and Scacchi leave more lasting impressions. Read full review

If they gave an Oscar for the year's most claustrophobic film, Presumed Innocent could have won it in a walk. Everything about this film is as cramped, clenched, and constricted as Harrison Ford's face, which looks like a tightly balled-up fist here. Read full review

In a welcome return to suspense, Pakula effectively conveys the claustrophobia of domesticity and courtroom procedure. Read full review

Presumed Innocent is a slow fuse of a movie. It never quite explodes with the resonance Pakula intends. It tries too hard to be important. But the story it tells is a good one, and once it's got its hooks in you, there's no turning away. [30 July 1990, p.56]

The convolutions of Turow’s plot remain absorbing, and Presumed Innocent is certainly as watchable as a lot of other courtoom-investigative thrillers. Yet almost everything in the picture feels sterile and posed. 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. The movie could have used some of the bowels-of-the-city grit Sidney Lumet brought to Q & A. Read full review

Director Alan J. Pakula sets the story at a methodical, unhurried pace, with a tone of sober, almost drab, realism enlivened by occasional flashes of courtroom drollery (and a smidgen of sex). Read full review

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). But mostly it is a solid whodunit, driven by subtext and the intensity of Ford, Greta Scacchi as the predatory other woman and Bonnie Bedelia as the wronged wife. Read full review

Pakula seems overawed by the book's critical and popular success. Whatever its other virtues, Presumed Innocent was basically a page turner; the movie is a slow burner. Read full review

Though it`s a handsome film, carefully staged and courageously low-key, the transition to the screen only exaggerates the disposable nature of the material while depriving it of the novel`s one stylistic strength, its unreliable narrator. Read full review

In reducing Presumed Innocent to a 126-minute film, director Pakula has necessarily stripped it of many complexities and ambiguities that lend the novel much of its interest. The performances are capable, if rarely inspired. Read full review

Presumed Innocent is interesting to the extent that it goes beyond the usual whodunit and courtroom drama formulas and shows how nobody really has clean hands. [27 July 1990, p.29P]

It's a movie of surpassing flatness, all surface, all monotone. Pace? It's as if the director, Alan J. Pakula, had dialed in half speed on the first day of shooting and never checked the throttle again. [27 July 1990, p.G5]