Jimmie Rainwood, A
successful plane engineer and loving husband finds himself being framed for a
crime he didn’t commit. Sent to prison he needs to learn the ‘prison life’ the
hard way while plotting his revenge.
I honestly
believe that Frank Darrabont watched this movie when he adapted the script for
‘The Shawshank redemption’. Just to quote that movie:
“...I had to come
in here to become a crook!”
Which is, pretty much, the whole plot of An innocent man.
This movie has
two main stars: F. Murray Abraham after his Amadeus tour-de-force. And, of
course, (Magnum P.I.) Tom Selleck sporting his famous moustache cementing him
as the ultimate ‘80s good guy.
What I like
about Tom Selleck is that he never tries something outranging his skill. This
is a man that knows where his strengths are –acting wise. And he sticks to it.
This is the way acting parts work. And this is how Selleck became the only
believable homosexual in In and Out.
Choices
To start with the
main reason why I like this movie it has to be because of the choice posed.
The hero, who is
in fact innocent –no ambiguity there- is put on trial and offered a plea
bargain. He refuses since he is innocent. This, however, leads to him serving
the full sentence. Then, ‘inside’ he has to become a criminal (and quite the
ass) to survive.
This is a
conundrum writers love. You take a character with all kinds of character traits
and force him/her to do something against character.
The big trick
here being: how to make it believable?
As any
scriptwriter will tell you this involves scenes, thus: time.
An innocent man
takes a lot of time to get the Selleck character to come to terms with the
cards he’s been dealt. The movie takes its time –a shimmer here and there- to
show what the Selleck character has to become if he wants to survive.
This is the strength
of the movie. Because, in the end, Rainwood still feels like a good guy
even though he most certainly isn’t.
80’s all over.
An innocent man
is an eighties movie to the bone. Just the opening credits alone reminds you of
this with this (
Then there’s the
moustache, F. Murray Abraham being portrayed as a messiah character (as was
often the case in that era, regardless of the situation) and the (obvious) want
to change America –the prison and justice system- without actually making a
point.
Still the movie
tries to be edgy. It has a brutal murder halfway through. And then, of course,
the axis of the movie which, unfortunately, is a bit undermined by the strange
racist undertone.
Racist?
To sidetrack a bit here: Our hero is white,
his helping messiah is white, he friends are white, his girlfriend is white –
the only two African-American guys in the entire movie are a villain and a
(rather useless) internal affairs officer.
The prison is
comprised of inmates who are almost predominately white in skin colour.
Yet the main
villain in the prison is an African American man. And our (white) hero has to
take him on.
Then there’s the
heroine who lies to the internal affairs officer that two men
called him the N-word.
I’ll just leave
it at that.
Sufficient to say
An innocent man is food for the 'PC-police'.
Now, I doubt this
was the intention of the movie but it does come across as such in 2018.
Back behind bars.
Still, as a
thriller in its own right, stripped from any the
movie works. It is a writing exercise about getting a certain character doing
things against character.
The actors play
their parts well enough. David Rasche is having a blast playing a doped up
crooked cop while Richard Young is his devilishly charming partner. Selleck,
then, is going all in displaying every acting chop he possesses against a
rather uninspired Abrahams.
It is clear that
Selleck’s hearth was in this movie.
Critiques aside, this movie
works. It is a classic tale of good prevailing over evil. But, as the movie
rightly (tries) to ask: at what cost?
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