When his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi) is murdered, prosecutor Rozat "Rusty" Sabich (Harrison Ford) is put on the case by his boss District Attorney Horgan (Brian Dennehey).
What his colleagues do not know is that Rusty had an affair with Carolyn.
When evidence points toward Rusty as the killer, he is abandoned by the DA.
Despite enlisting the services of rival attorney Alejandro "Sandy" Stern (Raul Julia), Rusty is in deep trouble.
What will he do to prove his innocence? And what will be left of him if Rusty prevails?
A Harrison Ford vehicle from Alan J. Pakula, director of All The President's Men?
With Gordon Willis (The Godfather) providing his signature heavy shadows to highlight the moral vacuum of powerful people doing terrible things?
Sign me up!
Presumed Innocent is a legal thriller where the tension comes from exposing the limits of the legal system and the ways in which people will manipulate it to their own ends.
It is a movie of strategy and tactics, not only of law, but investigation, the judicial process, and politics. It even extends to gender roles, and how Rusty’s assumptions about his mistress and his wife lead to his undoing.
The case does not end with a verdict - it is tossed out because the prosecution bungles the case.
It then turns out Sandy has blackmailed the judge, and Rusty’s investigator (John Spenser) had a missing piece of evidence the whole time.
Rusty’s defining weakness is how he trusts people too easily - he trusts his boss, he falls in love with Carolyn, and he does not even suspect his wife, despite his own betrayal of her trust.
In the main role, Ford is terrific.
Guarded, interior, always watching and evaluating, his performance as Rusty plays to his strengths.
The victim, Carolyn (Greta Scachi), is a phantom - a sign of Rusty’s guilt and his naivete.
Raul Julia brings an equal level of restraint to Sandy, with a hair touch of irony as he watches his opponents squirm.
Bonnie Bedilia is also great as Rusty’s wife, Barbara.
Reminiscent of Gone Girl in her planning of the crime, Barbara is a woman who put her life on delay. She proves her abilities in the most horrific way imaginable.
In smaller roles, Paul Winfield and John Spenser are also terrific - Winfield as the presiding judge, and Spenser as the detective who assists Rusty in his investigations.
One thing that stands out about Presumed Innocent is its simmering understatement.
The finale, with its major twist, could have been overblown, or tipped over into unintentional comedy.
When Rusty discovers the murder weapon among his tools, he goes to the cellar and washes it off.
The confrontation with Barbara is filled with emotion, all the more powerful for the performer’s lack of release.
Ford’s response to Bedilia’s whispered confession is silence and tears.
Dark and ambiguous, the film then cuts to a shot of the empty courtroom. In a reversal of the opening shot, the camera pans from the jury seats to the court bench, as Rusty repeats his opening lines about the importance of the legal system and his role in it.
However, now the context is inverted - Rusty Savage is trapped in his own private prison, forever compromised. Whatever ideals he had about the law are gone.
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