An Innocent Man [DVD] [1990]

By a long way Tom Selleck's best outing in the movies and well removed from the comfortable "Magnum" image he carefully cultivated for so long. Framed by two crooked cops who shot him in error, he ends up in a tough jail where survival is reliant on the guidance of a worldly lifer (a superb F.Murray Abraham). Gritty, violent and unforgiving the main character hardens as the film progresses up to it's revengeful and vicious climax.

Innocent? Yes, aren't we all? But in AN INNOCENT MAN, Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) really is, albeit a presumably highly paid one as a senior mechanic on the aircraft maintenance line of American Airlines in Southern California. Married to Kate (Laila Robins) and living in a hillside house with a view of Los Angeles-San Pedro Harbor, Jimmie has the good life. That is, until he runs afoul of two corrupt drug squad detectives from the local constabulary, Parnell (David Rasche) and Scalise (Richard Young), who supplement their income partnering with a major narcotics supplier, stealing from competing dealers, and selling the goods to their patron. Mistakenly led to believe that a deal is going down at Rainwood's home, they bust in while Jimmie is home alone finishing up a shower. Parnell and Scalise shoot Rainwood thinking the hair dryer he's holding is a weapon. Realizing their mistake, they cover their tracks by planting drugs in the home and a gun in Jimmie's hand, with which he ostensibly took a shot at the officers. Ultimately, Rainwood angrily refuses to plead guilty to lesser charges to get a reduced sentence, and a jury trial results in six years in the state pen.

While incarcerated, Jimmie must thrust aside inhibitions and learn how to literally kill to survive. He does this under the tutelage of fellow con and self-admitted criminal, Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham), also put away by Parnell and Scalise, though they beat up Cane's girlfriend during the process of the arrest. Eventually, Rainwood is let out on parole after three years. Returning home, he and Kate continue to be oppressed by the two crooked cops, and Jimmie falls back on his hard-won survival skills to break himself and his wife free.

My Mom recommended AN INNOCENT MAN since, in her former capacity as a staff psychiatrist for the Nevada Department of Corrections, she worked out of the men's prison in Carson City, where the exterior shots of Jimmie's lock-up were shot. If you've ever been to Nevada's state capitol, you'll recognize the adjacent Sierra Nevada range in the film. (The interior shots were apparently filmed at a disused prison in Cincinnati, OH - no mountains there.)

Now, the corrupt cop Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) in the 2001 film TRAINING DAY was one bad dude. Here, the Parnell and Scalise characters, while dangerous, are played as obnoxious wise guys almost to the point of caricature; Rasche and Young rendered them positively annoying by overacting, which is probably why Washington is an "A List" performer while the latter two aren't and never will be. At the other end of the spectrum is Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola) of Internal Affairs, who sympathizes with Kate's and Jimmie's dilemma and knows Parnell and Scalise are dirty, but can't prove it. Djola's performance is about as animated as a wooden hitching post.

Kate Rainwood, played competently by Robins, is believable and sympathetic as Jimmie's loyal wife, but her character is essentially tangential. The best supporting performance is undoubtedly by Abraham as the wily, prison-savvy Cane, whose motive for helping Rainwood is mostly inscrutable until the film's end when the payback Virgil is now enabled to deliver is delicious in the audience's contemplation.

Tom Selleck reminds me of John Wayne. The Duke never really acted; any role he played was essentially John Wayne dressed in a different costume. Wayne was, in my opinion a superlative entertainer, but not a great actor. Selleck, I think, falls into this same category. The majority of his movies are class B flicks more suitable for television, but his on-screen characters are so consistently engaging and attractive - perhaps accurately reflecting Tom himself - that I'd rather watch any one of his efforts than a substandard outing by a Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. For Selleck's presence alone, I'm awarding AN INNOCENT MAN four stars.

There's one aspect of the film that continues to niggle at my mind. At the conclusion, Jimmie packs a pistol that evolves in the plot as the one placed in his unconscious hand by Parnell and Scalise during the original frame-up three years previous. How did Rainwood come into its possession? Wouldn't it have been confiscated as evidence, and then destroyed by the police after his conviction?

James Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is a real stand up guy, with a loving wife and in a dream job where the company just couldn't cope without him, his life is just dandy. That is until two corrupt cops make a mistake and burst into his home believing it to be host to a drug deal. Thinking his hairdryer is a gun, one of the cops shoots Rainwood and it's then that the cops realise they have made a monumental error. So planting drugs around the home they set Rainwood up as a dealer who shot at the cops. Believing justice & honesty will see him OK, Rainwood refuses to cop a plea, and is promptly sentenced to a hell hole prison for six years. Where the affable Rainwood needs to wise up quickly or face a brutal and torrid time in the big house.

Earlier in 1989 we had seen the release of Sly Stallone vehicle Lock Up, a film, that for all its many faults, was a dream come true to the action movie fan who also has a bent for any piece involving incarceration. So up steps Tom Selleck, who after recently showing himself to be a more than effective light entertainer in film's such as Three Men & A Baby and Her Alibi, is looking to break out into other, more rounded, genres (he also made Quigley Down Under in 1989). For the most part it's a good choice by Selleck and the casting director. The role of Jimmie Rainwood calls for someone charming, elegant and reeking of pure homeliness. That's Selleck to a tea. But the problems for many observers has been, and will be for first time viewers, the transformation of homely Tom into cocksure daddio prison geezer. Thrust into a world of violence and male rape, Rainwood simply must shape up or face a few years of brutality and a stripping of his soul. We know this, and once he starts to be guided by Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham adding a touch of class to a stereotypical role}, the film for the rest of its prison section is sign posted for us. And it's hard to swallow, even for someone like me who is a fan of the film.

As for the other elements in the film, the various sub-plots hold few surprises. Rainwood's wife (Laila Robins) is loving and crusading for her man's release, but writer Larry Brothers has her very much by the numbers. As he does for Badja Djola's Internal Affairs investigator, John Fitzgerald. The latter of which is a shame as Djola holds his scenes very well and is aching to put more meat into the character. Then there of course is our dirty cops played by Richard Young & David Rasche. Young's Danny Scaliese is the calm thinking one, Rasche's Mike Parnell is the aggressive and borderline psychotic one. It's hard to tell if Rasche is playing it for ham or really attempting to layer the madness lurking within? Either way it's very entertaining, if ultimately miles away from the brilliance that was his Sledge Hammer! TV series. These cops are of course in desperate need of a fall, the question is are the makers here are merely reverting to formula or do they have some tricks up their sleeves? Well it's directed by Peter Yates and the writer is hardly an inspired scribe, you do the maths. And lets face it, Selleck is no Stallone. A better actor for sure, but when it comes to shanking and shooting who you gonna call? Rambo or Magnum?

I do like the film, but I love the genre it belongs too. And I literally will watch Abraham in anything. So take my 7/10 rating purely with a pinch of salt and call it a 5/10 time filler instead.