Presumed Innocent
Short description
Rusty Sabich is a deputy prosecutor whose career has been built on bringing charges against others. When a colleague, Carolyn Polhemus, is found murdered, he is assigned to investigate the case, but it soon emerges that they had been involved in an affair. That connection turns him from investigator into suspect, and the resulting prosecution places his marriage, his reputation and his freedom under strain. He turns to the defence attorney Sandy Stern to fight the case against him.
The film is based on Scott Turow's novel and was directed by Alan J. Pakula, who wrote the screenplay with Frank Pierson. It sits eighth in the run of ten features Pakula directed, arriving between Orphans and Consenting Adults and continuing the interest in institutions and concealed wrongdoing found in his earlier work. Harrison Ford plays Sabich, with Brian Dennehy as the district attorney Raymond Horgan, Raúl Juliá as Stern, Bonnie Bedelia as Barbara Sabich and Greta Scacchi as Carolyn Polhemus. Sydney Pollack and Mark Rosenberg produced for Warner Bros. Pictures and Mirage Enterprises.
Made for about 22 million dollars, the film took roughly 221 million dollars worldwide, a strong return that made it one of the year's more successful releases. It runs 127 minutes. On IMDb it holds 6.9 from around 52,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 from roughly 850 votes, while its critics' rating stands at 7.3 from 57 reviews, so critics rated it somewhat more warmly than audiences did.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the beginning of the film, Harrison Ford's character reviews files on a computer screen containing the names of people involved in a court case. Most of the names on the list are those of the film crew.
- Harrison Ford's hairstyle was made to make him appear less masculine and self-assured than his characters in other films.
- Paul Winfield (1939-2004) read the novel that served as the literary source for the film in the late 1980s and told his agent that if it were ever adapted for the screen, he would like to play the judge. Several years later, when work on the film actually began, Winfield launched a full-scale campaign to land the coveted role. Director Alan J. Pakula (1928-1998) invited him to audition and ultimately cast him as the judge.
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