An Innocent Man (1989) User Reviews

Correct film about a good man in a dangerous prison

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 12 July 2005]

The movie talks an ordinary family man (Tom Selleck) who works as an airplane engineer and married a good woman (Laila Robins) . He's accused by two baddie policemen (David Rashe and Richard Young) as peddler and he's sent to a hard jail . There he is harassed and humiliated until that fury and revenge emerge . He's only helped by a veteran convict (F.Murray Abraham) framed for prison life.

It's an interesting film developed in two parts : in and out of prison . The best part is narrated into prison because of it reflects the astonishing existence of the inmates , with fights, threats ,murders and where rules the strongest's law . In the picture there are suspense, violence, drama , tension and a bit of action in the final confrontation . The picture obtained moderated success , it was not a smash hit neither a flop . Tom Selleck's interpretation is fine but F.Murray Abraham is better , he makes a terrific acting as the veteran con who teaches naive Selleck to take on risks and dangers of the gaol . Many of the film's prison scenes were filmed at the old Hamilton County Jail in Cincinnati, Ohio , also known as the "Cincinnati Workhouse", had been permanently closed prior to the location filming of the movie and it had been built during the Civil War . It was closed due to being "inhumane, cruel and unusual" by modern jail standards . Atmospheric music by Howard Shore who subsequently achieved many hits and one Oscar for ¨Lord of the rings¨. Nice cinematography by William A.Fraker , photographer of various classic films . The motion picture was rightly directed by Peter Yates . The story will appeal to prison genre enthusiasts and Tom Selleck fans.

In Peter Yates' film, bad cops become dangerous predators

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 7/10 · 29 January 2006]

The film opens with sequences conceived to present Selleck as a loving husband and a devoted airlines maintenance supervisor… His name is Jimmie Rainwood…

One night, a couple of crooked narcotics cops break down Rainwood's peaceful door...

Jimmy—who had just taken a shower—comes out with a hair dryer in his hand… He is shot twice by the anti-drugs cops who have caught a shadow of what looks like a gun… So to justify their error, they concocted an entire fairy tale planting drugs in Jimmy's home and a gun in his hand…

Rainwood ends up in jail…

Luckily, he is befriended by Virgil Cane, played by F. Murray Abraham… Cane was the character to keep your eye on… He is a 'schemer and a charmer.'

Virgil disagrees with Jimmy's sensitiveness as a straight man… This is an 'insane place with insane rules' that tests the human consciousness, yet survival will never be the same without some sort of sacrifice… A group of degenerate prisoners make life unbearable for Jimmy until he learns how to really fight back…

The film had its fair share of bloody moments and did not shy away from the nasty things that go on in men's prisons

That's Virgil Cane man, Lone Ranger ain't got nothing on him.

[hitchcockthelegend · 7/10 · 24 April 2010]

James Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is a real stand up guy, with a loving wife and in a dream job with a company that 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. Here 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 films such as Three Men and a Baby and Her Alibi, is looking to break out into other, more rounded genres (he also made the quite excellent Quigley Down Under in 1989). For the most part it's a good fit for Selleck and the casting director. The role of Jimmie Rainwood calls for someone charming, elegant and reeking of pure homeliness. That's Selleck without doubt. But the problems for many observers have 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 the prison sections 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 real shame as Djola holds his scenes very well and is aching to put more meat into the character. Then there is of course 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 if 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, so 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 a lot, but I love the genre it belongs to anyway. And I literally will watch Abraham in anything. So take my 7/10 rating purely with a pinch of salt and call it a 6/10 time filler if you not be singing of the same page as myself.

simple and realistic

[roy-budge · 14 February 2003]

an airplane mechanic gets accidently caught up in a bungled drug bust by two bent cops and is sent to prison. Tom Selleck, always calm in his roles seems to take it lying down at first, but when he is constantly picked out by the usual jail hoodlums and is still haunted by the cops who framed him, he can take no more. dont listen to any of the negative comments for this film unless you prefer the comic book jail films like Stallones "Lock Up" (1989) because this film is realistic and the storyline is simple and NOT full of hero prisoners on a revolt who finally get the president himself to give an official pardon. Tom is always great in whatever he does and you can be sure that this is another great effort from him. i love the dialogue...like.."now you dont have a problem with that now...do you white boy" Not your type of movie? i wouldnt bet on that!!!

9/10

Clichéd , Contrived , But Watchable Enough

[Theo Robertson · 6/10 · 6 April 2003]

Making a film set in an American prison is sort of like making a horror film. When making the latter all you have to do is keep the lighting low , hold the camera close up on a characters face , have scary sounds out of view and there you have something that will effectively scare an audience . With the former all you have to do is put an ordinary joe in a prison , surround him with a bunch of black men and have a guard say "Time for a shower you scum " and you'll have the audience biting their finger nails.

***** SPOILERS *****

Tom Selleck plays the everyman character of Jimmie Rainwood fairly well in this film and you really can empathise with him as he gets mugged by the home boys on his way back from the canteen , and the following scene made me aware of something I hadn't known at the time - American prisons are factionalised along ethnic lines . I know this now after reading up on it and watching documentaries on the American penal system which did slightly spoil the credibility of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for me .

In no way should THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and AN INNOCENT MAN be compared of course , but this film is very entertaining and sometimes chilling as the prison clichés come one after the other . The white prisoners despise Jimmie for supposedly showing the white race to be weak while the black prisoners show what's in store for him by letting Jimmie witness a gang rape in the gym , and if you look like Tom Selleck you've got to worry about being popular in prison for all the wrong reasons . My main criticism about AN INNOCENT MAN is the rather weak ending where it's revealed that the cops who fitted up Jimmie are corrupt which lets the screen writers - just like Jimmie - get out of jail .

All in all a good prison drama . If you like the HBO prison drama OZ you'll certainly enjoy this . The day after it was shown on the ITV network a TV presenter even referred to it on a news feature dealing with juvenile crime

An Innocent Magnum

[seveb-25179 · 7/10 · 21 October 2019]

This is Tom Sellecks best movie in my opinion (so far) The early dialogue scenes and dialogue are not very promising, stilted and by the numbers, but once it reaches prison, Lawdy Moma! The standard goes up through the roof and out into the stratosphere! I can't recall a better portrayal of what life is like inside an American prison than this, or a film that changes gears from B movie level to A grade so dramatically For a movie that is primarily designed as entertainment, rather than an expose or documentary, this strikes me as pretty accurate (not that I would really know, having never been in prison) It manages to generate, what I found to be, a very credible nightmare World, where there are no good options and little in the way of hope. F Murray Abraham, as the old lag, and Bruce A Young, as Selleck's worst nighmare, are particularly outstanding. Once we return to the outside World the standard falls back to earth, but remains entertaining and very comptently put together. Sledge Hammer puts in a noteworthy stint as the nasty main villain, he's a strictly second rate as a actor and bit OTT, but in this case ideal for his one dimentional role After some initial confusion about his moral standing, where the audience is allowed to wonder if maybe he's just a bit over enthusiastic (like his comedy character), he soon shows his true colours and becomes entirely devoid of redeeming qualities, constantly gimacing and showing us the whites of his eyes. Laila Robins puts in a sterling effort as the suffering wife, but I found Badja Djola a bit wooden as the good cop Recommended

Surprisingly Good

[DuskShadow · 7/10 · 7 October 2019]

I was quite happy to see F Burry Abraham in this, he is a rare gem and can steal the show oft, like in his role in Scarface. However, Sellick was of course the main feature and did well to portray a guy being wronged and thrown into the prison system. Really good movie, pretty enjoyable, fairly realistic. 7/10

The Incredible Mo's adventures in the big house

[tenthousandtattoos · 6/10 · 4 September 2007]

This movie looks like a TV-movie. But that's okay, because I was watching it on a TV set.

Tom Selleck plays Jimmie Rainwood, and aircraft engineer living in the seaside 'burbs with his wife, Kate (Laila Robins), who suffers the old 'wrong place at the wrong time' thing when two highly decorated (and highly corrupt) cops, acting on a tip, hit his house, which is on Oak Lane, mistaking it for Oak WAY, where the real drug deal is going down.

Jimmie's just taken a shower while he contemplates the salad Kate left for him in the refrigerator (she's working late) when the two narcs burst in. Mistaking Jimmie's hairdryer for a gun, coke-addled detective Mike Parnell (David Rasche) shoots Jimmie.

Not wanting to tarnish their "distinguished" careers, the two cops frame Jimmie and the legal system fails him and he winds up sentenced to 6 years.

While Jimmie learns how to survive in the big house from lifer Virgil (F Murray Abraham), his wife writes letters, harrasses people etc to try and get him out, including clever manipulation of Internal Affairs Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), and the corrupt narcs do their best to keep Jimmie and Kate silent about their collossal screw-up.

A pretty formulaic prison-drama revenge-story, An Innocent Man has strength in it's performances and in it's realistic depiction of prison-life, particularly the tendency for some more experienced inmates to take pity on the "new guy" and give him some pointers so he stands at least some chance of surviving beyond his first week. And Laila Robins is really good as Rainwood's wife, remaining steadfast in her belief in Jimmie's innocence. And it steers clear of most of the jail-movie-clichés we are used to, like the "oh my god it's a shower scene...don't drop the soap", or the sadistic warden character.

This was never meant to be a dialogue-driven character study, nor a psychological examination of what incarceration does to the human soul. It's a revenge flick, a Tom Selleck action movie (you gotta love that he simply adds some 'handlebars' to that ridiculous moustache for his tough-guy jail-look) and a bite of after-dinner entertainment that delivers. Todd Graff deserves a mention as the hapless Robby, a repeat offender who offers Jimmie some initial tips when they first arrive, though he gets doused in petrol and set alight about 10 minutes in...he's really good though, playing the loser who knows what every prison on the eastern seaboard looks like.

F Murray Abraham is worth the price of admission alone. He has some great lines. Oh, wait...yeah and that flying leap Tom Selleck does out of nowhere to take down Det Parnell...classicly weird and entertaining. All in all, worth a look.

New Rules for survival

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 27 September 2012]

I think An Innocent Man proved that whenever he decided to end his Magnum PI series, Tom Selleck was going to have no trouble in getting good parts. And not those that were a variation on his Thomas Magnum persona.

This is one really powerful film about An Innocent Man getting caught in the criminal justice machinery because of a pair of dirty cops, David Rasche and Richard Young. These two who are decorated heroes in the Long Beach PD for all the arrests they rack up are actually just putting out of business all the independents in the narcotics trade for the local organized crime boss and making a nice side living in the process.

They get an address wrong from an informant and they invade Selleck's home, shoot and wound Selleck, and then plant evidence to make Selleck out as a dealer. He gets convicted and sentenced to six years hard time and I do mean hard which it is for anyone who's not a professional in the criminal trade.

Fortunately he gets himself a mentor in old time con F. Murray Abraham who also has a score to settle with those two cops. Abraham teaches him all the new rules for survival in the joint, housed with men who are by nature incorrigible and don't play by civilized rules. Selleck does things that were against his old nature.

When he does get paroled from inside the joint Abraham quarterbacks a revenge scheme that Selleck participates in.

Besides those mentioned I should also single out Laila Robins who plays Selleck's wife who stands by him and Bruce Young who plays a violent convict that Selleck has to deal with in the joint.

An Innocent Man is one of the best made for television films done and should have gotten big screen theatrical release.

Interesting story

[spenrh · 7/10 · 11 December 2018]

Tom Seleck did a pretty good job playing the straight man Jimmy Rainwood who was an honest married man with a career of working maintenance on commercial aircrafts, who was then unfairly railroaded by two dirty cops (Officer Parnell and Danny) who framed him for being a drug dealer who shot at them when invading his house. Truth was that Rainwood was drying his hair after a shower, holding the hair dryer which in the half lit hallway looked like a gun being raised. Also, they mistakened Rainwood and his house for a drug dealer's house and operation. The latter mistake came from Parnell's impatient arrogance, which was basically the one move which started the whole chain of events, when one of the guys Parnell and Danny did business with told Parnell the address of the real drug dealer, and Parnell arrogantly shut him up and hung the phone up before the guy tried to make sure Parnell copied the address correctly, thus him copying it wrong and going to the wrong house. If Parnell hadn't arrogantly shut him up, he would have gone to the drug dealer's house on Oak Way instead of Rainwood's on Oak Lane (and both houses happened to have the same house number).

Once Parnell realized the error was when his crooked framing game began (because he wouldn't ever let anyone know that they make mistakes), and we learn later how Rainwood was not the first victim of Parnell's shady corruption. F Murray Abraham, the guy Rainwood became friends with in the slammer, revealed that he got screwed over by Parnell and Danny also, and him having that in common with Rainwood got him to have a soft spot for him. F Murray told Rainwood how Parnell framed him for armed robbery, but unlike Rainwood, F Murray got even with the cops and made a move that got him in prison for life. The movie never made clear what he actually did to get even with them.

The other characters along the way were pretty standard for this type of story, there was Detective Fitzgerald who had already suspected Parnell and Danny of foul play but couldn't do anything about it without solid proof. Then, there was the prosecutor who offered Rainwood a plea bargain which would've cut his punishment time down alot and in a minimum security jail instead of state prison, but Rainwood refused to take it by mistakenly insisting that he could clear his name in court altogether. But he couldn't, and Parnell won due to, as Fitzgerald says, there not being enough proof of Rainwood being innocent. He is sent to the big house for 6 years, but gets out after 3 for good behavior, which I was curious about because Rainwood was suspected of murdering another convict in there, gangster Jingles. Jingles and his gang harassed Rainwood pretty bad, stole his stuff, beaten him up severely, and then made him watch another inmate getting raped while telling him he was next. Then Rainwood, who seriously at first didn't want to do it, with F Murray's help stabbed Jingles with a piece of glass. I'm assuming Rainwood stabbing him didn't hurt him being able to get parole because he threw the piece of glass down a drain and there then wasn't enough evidence to officially call it murder. But the warden clearly said he knew it was him and gave him 90 days in the hole. I guess he would've gotten worse than that and not have gotten parole if there was hard evidence. Also, how it was said to work in prison was once you kill the guy who's harassing you, nobody will ever mess with you again. I would've guessed that if someone killed a gang member in prison, then the other members of his gang would be wanting his blood, and he would definitely not be free from anyone coming after him like Rainwood was after killing Jingles.

Rainwood and F Murray bonded well while in prison. The big Butcher guy was an interesting character too, and also gave Rainwood similar advice on how to stand up. Then there was Robbie, the first guy Rainwood met in prison, who acted like he knew everything but then met a horrible death by being lit on fire for, as F Murray told Rainwood, he ripped some guys off for something, but he didn't make it clear what.

Parnell and Danny were the reason Rainwood's entire ordeal happened, from the minute they framed him to after he got out on parole, when they visit him right after he gets out. Tension rises, and Parnell tells Rainwood "You are now an ex-covict on parole! The state will always believe us over you! Always! From now on, you do exactly what we say, if we yell s***, you squat! Remember that, and it 'might' keep you from going back to prison.".

It was a pretty good, interesting movie overall. And I liked Rainwood's wife Layla Robbins who stuck by him throughout the whole ordeal, crusading to try to get him out of prison, her getting harassed by Parnell and Danny for it, and then her helping Rainwood when he got out to fight for justice (with Fitzgerald's help too) for everything those dirty cops had done to him.

Prison drama glued in mediocrity.

[barnabyrudge · 5/10 · 3 May 2007]

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.

Tense, Suspenseful - A Great Find

[mycannonball · 9/10 · 26 June 2008]

This movie is a great example of a character thrust into an awful situation - a situation where you question, "What would I do in his shoes?" For that reason, it is very tense and suspenseful throughout as Tom Selleck's character tries to navigate prison life. I really felt for his character - his acting was great. Sure, there are some moments of cheesy lines and overdone composing and a bit of over-acting by the various villains, but for the most part, this is one of the better character thrillers I've seen in awhile. Selleck is great, as if the man who befriends him inside the prison. Can't find anything new to watch? I recommend checking out this little gem from 1989!

A fun 'wronged man' prison movie with an improbable climax

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 5 August 2016]

This watchable "wrong man" drama is probably the highlight of Tom Selleck's less than impressive movie career. Okay, so prison movies are ten-a-penny these days but this one is well made and has some unpleasant moments to stop it becoming just another television-made movie-of-the-week. Tom Selleck is a likable, lightweight lead who you actually care about and his various obstacles in prison - while admittedly clichéd - are quite frightening. From the bullying racists to the rapes in the showers and the wise old inmates (an excellent turn from F. Murray Abraham), everything is present and correct here. One moment has Selleck taking on a chief opponent as he plans to knife him in the toilets and is totally gripping.

Outside of prison, things are less interesting, with a worthy but unmemorable actress playing Selleck's girlfriend who sticks by him through thick and thin. The introduction of two corrupt cops, a kind of 'bad' Starsky and Hutch if you will, sets the sense for an implausible climax which sees Selleck suddenly become a fearless action man and do lots of stunts. Cool, but hardly believable. Overall, AN INNOCENT MAN is a fine thriller with a good central premise and an adequate execution - and it makes a nice evening's family entertainment.

Pure revenge film

[gcd70 · 5/10 · 18 January 2008]

Pure revenge film all the way is this drama from the pen of Larry Brothers which tried to be a serious movie about the prevailing of justice when "An Innocent Man" (Tom Selleck) is framed by a pair of corrupt narcotics detectives.

Peter Yates never stood a chance of making this a film with a message due to its obvious direction, conclusion and its total lack of life's ever present ambiguities. Tom Selleck's character is just too pure and righteous, and his loving wife is far too good for words, while the bad guys are just so, so bad it's annoying. F. Murray Abraham is probably the only slightly believable, and enjoyable, character, as he doesn't mind helping out a friend, yet we know he has a dark past. An agreeable showing from the one time Academy Award winner.

This is the only highlight though in what is essentially a two dimensional movie lacking completely in originality. Howard Shore's surprisingly below par score is also a let down. Recommended just for audiences who either love Tom Selleck or love seeing the nasties get their comeuppance.

Thursday, August 25, 1994 - T.V.

quite good

[mattkratz · 10 December 2005]

I think this was a good film about being framed and getting revenge. Tom Selleck is great in his role as the title character. Two crooked cops make a mistake (in more ways than one) when they go to the wrong address expecting to find a drug dealer, break into his house, mistake a hair dryer he is carrying for a gun, and shoot him. They then realize that they are at the wrong house and try to amend their mistake by framing Selleck as a drug dealer. Everything goes their way, and Selleck winds up in prison. Three years later, he is paroled and seeks revenge. During those three years, he is faced with the harsh realities of prison life and is beaten up more than once. F. Murray Abraham is there for him, fortunately, and helps him survive. (Abraham plays another inmate.) I liked this film even though it did follow a formula and was a typical revenge type movie. It was a great role for Selleck, who was perfect in his part.

** 1/2 out of ****

In a blink your life can change!

[MacLaird · 7/10 · 30 March 1999]

A law abiding airplane mechanic is caught in a drug sting by a couple of dishonest cops and finds out that even being innocent isn't good enough to keep him out of trouble.

Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abrams, and Bruce A. Young give excellent, honest performances in this all too believable tale of prison life. Having no where to turn but Virgil Cane, another con; Jimmie Rainwood learns from Jingles that life on the "inside" isn't like his old life and he must learn new skills to survive. Jimmies wife, Kate, works as hard outside to get him freed and this tale of lies, and struggle challenges each of us to examine our survival instincts. Trust is no longer taken for granted. An excellent movie to make you think! One of Tom's best performances

A woke free old school movie

[chrisarentertainment · 7/10 · 14 November 2021]

After suffering the left wing agenda in countless modern films, there was nothing woke going on here. No forced racial, gender or sexual narratives. This is why I like these old school flicks.

Excellent revenge flick

[Aitch-5 · 7/10 · 18 September 2005]

I thought this movie would seriously put me in a dark mood, but I found that I liked it -- a lot. I was surprised by how much I liked this film. This is a very good "B" movie, and I enjoyed just about all of it -- the affectionate scenes between Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) and his wife, the scenes with the two corrupt cops, the scenes with Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), the scene at the beginning with Rainwood assuring his boss that the jet airliner his people are working on will be fixed on time, and even the scenes in prison, especially those with Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham), but I even enjoyed the black-gang scenes (because I was rooting for Jimmie to get mad and take his tormentors down). Can you tell that I was entertained? :-)

This is the kind of movie to rent if you're in the mood to watch a good and truly innocent man get knocked around by nasty people you'll seriously love to hate (crooked cops AND prison gang members), watch the guy suffer a bit, and then watch him get back on his feet and get his revenge on his tormentors (without losing his humanity). The characters and situations may be a bit cliché, but I don't care. The movie reminds you, as one prisoner tells Jimmie Rain after he gets to prison, that there are times when you don't have to stand tall, but you do have to stand up. Rent this and watch Rainwood learn, under Virgil's guidance, how to stand up.

Tom Selleck is a Bad Mo... Shut Your Mouth!

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 23 June 2017]

Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer. Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer.

This is a very unconventional action film, with a good guy turned into a threat. I suppose that's not too strange, a man driven to the edge. But here we have a guy who goes from innocent to killer and beyond, making it his business to crush a pair of corrupt cops.

While corrupt cops exist, this film goes out of its way to make the duo as sleazy and hated as possible. My goodness, I just felt rage in my soul about these two guys, so I have to give the actors credit for really coming across as jerks. Selleck was also great, though it was a shame he had to go from good to bad in order to make it through the story.

Just The Best

[mailofthefuture · 10/10 · 31 July 2015]

In my 35 years on earth, I've been to just 2 movies that aroused an actual standing ovation from the audience in the theater: Speed & An Innocent Man. I was only 9 years old when this movie came out, so it's only right to first thank my parents for always allowing me and my brother the privilege to see "R" rated movies at such a young age.

There's just something about this movie that stirs up your emotions like none other. While some might call this a "B" movie, to me, the acting is just so real to life and spot on, much more realistic than say for people who are more purists when it comes to the art of movies.

There are several stand out performances here. David Rasche to me, should have won an Oscar for his role as one of two the dirty cops. He probably plays my favorite bad guy role of all-time, is just plain masterful every time he comes on the screen. Anybody who can make a bad guy like-able by being so over the top corrupt, you know there's something special going on.

Bruce Young as Jingles was another all-time classic character, another charismatic villain with a sparkle of gleam in his eyes. F. Murray Abraham was fantastic, as he delivers one of the best ending lines to a movie of all-time.

Honestly everybody who participated in An Innocent Man was on their A game, I can mention every single character here. I can talk about this movie forever, give you a standard IMDb review but I am not going to. I will simply say that if you really haven't seen this movie, you are missing out on something very magical.

This is my favorite prison movie ever made, slightly better than Shawshank for how down to earth it was. If it doesn't rattle your emotions you must be some type of surrogate. That, or a spiritual robot....

It Could Happen to You

[fatcat-73450 · 6/10 · 12 October 2021]

First off, let me say that it's offensive that this film is set in Long Beach, which had a 40% Latino population in 1990 and probably an even larger share of the prison population than that, yet the demographics of the prison seem to be 70% white/30% black. Not a single visibly Latino character to be found.

Nice whitewashing, guys. You could have literally set it almost anywhere - North Dakota, Connecticut, Alaska - and it probably would have been more demographically accurate. Why Southern California?

Also I doubt the white gangs in prison would let one of their own get manhandled like this even if he didn't join their team? The movie is has quite strong racist undertones implicit in its implausible setup.

Anyway, the movie is an effective anti-police film. That's surprising for Tom Selleck, who seems to be a Republican, would agree to such a thing, but I guess he's more objective than most and doesn't blindly pay lip service to police. Got to watch the watchmen because ugly things can happen when you don't.

Selleck's character is framed for a crime he didn't commit and the police plant some stuff on him so they don't risk their jobs. It could totally happen - people selling you our just to protect such a slight interest as a job or some profits - who cares? He can't do anything anyway, right?

In prison he has to lay down his old morals and ethics and come into touch with his primal masculine side. Eventually he's let out on parole.

If the movie ended there, it would have been an effective "Call of the Wild"-type situation where an animal goes back to his basic roots. It might have been a 9 or a 10.

Unfortunately, it continues and goes into the territory of moustache-twirling stock villains and shootouts at around the 60% mark.

The first part is excellent though. I could totally see it happening to someone in real life and it probably has happened lots of times. The desire to keep one's small benefits or to not risk one's hide is powerful even if you have to ruin someone else's life to do it. It could happen to you. It could happen to me.

Honourable Mentions: Life (1999). About two black men who get sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit by corrupt policemen. A better movie and probably a more common and realistic situation than this one.

Includes one hoodlum cliché after another

[steiner-sam · 3/10 · 26 October 2022]

It's a (yawn) revenge crime drama set in 1980s southern California. It follows a man who has successfully worked as an airline maintenance engineer for American Airlines for 12 years and gets into trouble with crooked cops.

Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) and his wife, Kate (Laila Robins), live in Long Beach. They live a picture-perfect life and are planning a vacation trip to Thailand. Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young) are two crooked narcotics cops who routinely steal some of the drugs they seize during arrests. One night when Jimmie is home alone, they mistakenly raid his house and accidentally shoot him. While he's still unconscious, they decide to frame him by planting a gun and some drugs.

Jimmie is convicted and sent to prison. There he encounters Virgil Caine (F. Murray Abraham), a mobster in prison for the long term. Virgil helps Jimmie survive against gang leaders like Jingles (Bruce A. Young).

When Jimmie gets out, Parnell and Scalise threaten him, so he decides to take revenge, though it doesn't turn out quite as he anticipated.

This movie is bad. The script includes one hoodlum cliché after another, and the characters are primarily stereotypes following a plot that beggars belief. It sounded like a green scriptwriter's first draft. The one exception is F. Murray Abraham. The direction is remarkably bad, too, for a well-known director.

Very compelling

[lreilly2 · 8/10 · 3 July 2004]

Tom Selleck is absolutely fabulous in this movie! Hollywood usually is very bad with jailhouse movies. They tend to go to extremes when depicting what it's like to suddenly lose your freedom and always neglect to portray the mind-numbing boredom, lack of privacy and constant noise that is for years part of a prisoners daily life. Having spent time in prison myself may make me a bit biased in favor of a movie where a convict actually gets revenge on the cops who set him up-so be it. I can remember only one other movie as good as this that came close to showing the reality of prison life and that was 'Short Eyes' a movie filmed in the Tombs in Manhattan-a place where I was a guest more than once. Check out the wonderful performance of F. Murray Abraham in this flick as the tough old con that give Selleck advice on how to survive in prison. Jailhouse movies made in Hollywood always seem patently phony to me as a rule-like some director's idea of what he thinks jail should be. This one is a huge exception to that rule. I recommend it highly and think you'll like it.

Full of howlers, inane manipulation, and "justice gone wrong"...

[moonspinner55 · 4/10 · 13 March 2009]

Ordinary Joe (Tom Selleck) is in the right house at the wrong time when two scummy cops invade his residence to arrest him for drugs; of course the guy is clean, the cops made a mistake, so they rectify their gaffe by planting the goods on him. Next stop: the courtroom (where an ages-old marijuana infraction rears its ugly head!), and eventually the Big House. Once Selleck is behind bars, plotting to clear his good name, the picture falls into that timeworn vat of melodramatic clichés in the clink. It's a trap for the lead character as well as the audience. Peter Yates directed, hoping to spare us none of the horrors and humiliations of life in the jug. The movie is played for the sensational, and yet some viewers actually bought into it (the picture grossed just over $20M at the domestic box office). Perhaps they're too young to know it has all been done before. *1/2 from ****

Guilty Until Proved Innocent

[Richie-67-485852 · 8/10 · 27 September 2011]

Riveting entertainment of someone accused of a crime that they didn't commit and how the system can be tainted or shuffled against you on a whim. The shocking part is there is nothing you can do about it. I suppose that is why it takes 13 years to execute someone in this country too. We want to be sure before we take a life. Good story, acting and plausible more times than not. The characters draw you in and you either hate them or root for them, but sitting still is not an option with your emotions in full play. This movie activates the emotions. There are plot holes, but we trade them for the raw adventure to be found in watching the movie and joining the characters. There are 4 movies that depict life in prison accurately. 1. American Me 2. Blood In Blood Out 3. The Glass House and this one. If you want to scare someone straight, there is the line-up to remind them to behave them selves now or fight for your life later. This movie also reminds us of how power and money can rule and how we end up serving those things. Then, they finish us off all the worst for it. Catch this movie without interruptions, have a snack ready, and be entertained. I did a bowl of home made double roasted sunflower seeds. I recommend this over biting your nails or smoking to relieve the tension found in this movie at times...Bon Voyage