Barbe102
One of the best prison movies ever! Selleck is very good and Abraham as the hardened con is excellent.The worst premise: how do you prove you are innocent ...Dirty cops high on coke made a fatal error and enter the wrong home. An innocent man is shot; arrested; and imprisoned.His life is ruined. His life will never be the same again. Prison life is hell.What does a man of integrity and character do in prison, unjustly accused??!!His wife is obsessed with proving his innocence.So compelling ... in my husband's top 10 of all time!
Jonathon Dabell
The name Peter Yates is not bandied around a great deal amongst movie fans, which is quite surprising since he is the director who brought us such fondly remembered classics as Summer Holiday, Bullitt and The Hot Rock. Yates is also behind the camera on this Tom Selleck vehicle, but there's little here to remind one of the halcyon days of his earlier classics. If anything, An Innocent Man has about it the air of a competent but totally uninspired made-for-TV prison drama (in actual fact, this is not a TV-movie but a major big-screen release, complete with relatively big stars). It is not a bad film, merely one that never rises above mediocrity at any point.Airline mechanic Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) leads a normal life. He works nine-to-five like any ordinary citizen, pays his bills, and loves his wife Kate (Laila Robins). His existence is shattered when two narcotics cops mistakenly raid his house and shoot him. The cops, Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young), have been holding back drugs from some of their busts and selling them privately for big bucks. They were only in Rainwood's house because of an address mix-up linked to another bust. Fearing their profitable scam might be exposed unless they take drastic action, Scalise and Parnell plant narcotics in Rainwood's house and make it look like they were there on a legitimate raid. As a result, Jimmie is convicted of a crime he never committed and sent to a tough penitentiary for several years. While her husband is inside, Kate works tirelessly to clear his name, bringing in honest cop John Fitzgerald (Badja Djola) to investigate her suspicions of police corruption. But it's a slow process, and in the meantime Jimmie must learn to survive in the dangerous prison environment. A tough, experienced convict called Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham) teaches him how to cope, but Rainwood's peaceful life prior to imprisonment makes him struggle to adapt to his new surroundings. After many hardships – including having to kill a prison bully – Jimmie is finally released. Hardened by his experience, he sets out to track down the dirty duo that set him up in the first place.There's nothing hugely wrong with the basic story (scripted by Larry Brothers) other than the fact that it is somewhat familiar. The problems with An Innocent Man are more to do with issues regarding the general handling of the film. In the acting stakes no-one gives a really strong performance; in the music department Howard Shore provides a bland, lazy score; photographically the film is totally conventional and "play-safe"; and in the directing stakes, Yates goes about his job in strictly by-the-numbers fashion. When thinking about the film afterwards, words like "inconsequential", "unmemorable", "unremarkable" and "routine" spring to mind. Nothing about it stands out in a good nor bad way – it's just typical 5-out-of-10 fodder from first frame to last. One of the main purposes of the film seems to be to give the star a more hard-edged role than usual, but apart from dollops of foul language and extra fake blood during the fighting sequences, it's still Tom Selleck playing Tom Selleck. An Innocent Man is easy to watch - it's even easier to forget.
MARVMOOCOW
This little under rated gem is a great flick.Witness the transformation of Tom Selleck from all round nice guy to bad ass dude as his life is turned upside down by two corrupt cops who make a mistake on a bust. This is a very enjoyable flick and well worth a look its definitely one of Sellecks better films and seriously deserved better treatment at the cinemas than what it did.If you've got nothing better to do on a rainy afternoon then this is highly recommended viewing,its not "The Shawshank Redemption",which is my favourite jail film,or even "The Green Mile" but it is still a great little film and a great time filler.Sometimes I wonder what Sellecks career would've been like had he of made a little film called "Raiders of The Lost Ark" perhaps his film career would've gone through the roof,he definitely deserves a better film career than what he had.
tugito
It was a film about life..about circumstances that we never imagine that could happen but it happens all the time around us.. While I was watching that film I just wanted to kick something,my nerves where full of anger just because it gets too deep in the main character and it makes you feel you are him. It's surely one of the best films about corruption and it has a very strong ending. It is not a happy film, it's a hit to the bone film. take it or leave it. I cannot categorize it into something like society film or thriller, it is a life film I should say better and it is brilliant. Its one of those films that you always remember from the 90's as the one film that you didn't think it would be good but finally changed your whole month...
