Innocent

Scott Turow is an amazing writer because of his ability to give full, rich, textured lives to most of the characters in a book. In his fictional world of Kindle county, even the peripheral figures have great,textured back-stories. He has great insight into human nature. It's too bad that you can see almost none of this in the TV movie version of Innocent.

I watched this movie shortly after reading the book. The book was fascinating and absorbing. While the movie was competently made, it lacked most of the detail that makes Turow's books so rich and interesting. The recorded version of the book is 14 hours long, and none of that time was wasted or boring. The movie was probably less than 90 minutes, if you take out the commercial breaks. There was no way for them to compress so much character development and plot into such a small space. And in my opinion, it was wrong to try.

Unfortunately, though the movie isn't awful, I can't think of any reason to recommend it. There are some good performances, but the script is just too skeletal to do justice to this story.

I hope that the next time Scott Turow gets an movie offer on one of his great books, that he holds out for a miniseries instead.

Trurow's novel was long and dealt with all the legal details unfolding with tremendous justice and competence. Think of this movie as a very abridged version of the novel trying to cram in a lot of character and plot development with a lot of very competent actors. There are 'hints' of Barbara Sabich's psychological problems from the onset, and you have to deftly catch them to make sense of the movie as it develops. Of course, Marcia Gay Harden does justice playing the part very carefully and not obviously if you don't look for her frailties from the start. Bill Pullman playing Judge Rusty Sabich, his son played by Callard Harris, the court clerk who ends up being the mysterious mistress for the prosecution and girlfriend played by Mariana Klaveno are all capably performed considering the pressures of an 'abridged' version. The prosection played by Richard Schiff and Tahmoh Penikett - the latter plays an over enthusiastic, careless and doltz of an assistant prosecutor to Schiff's diligence and care, while the defense handled by Alfred Molina and Janet Kidder are just great at letting the prosecution exhaust itself with its poorly constructed case against the judge. "Hey", it's an entertaining movie if you have the time and mindset to watch it carefully. It's not a 'disappointer' at all! (And you don't have to be 60 years or older to appreciate the contradictions presented between impatient youth and crafty and forbearing senior adults in the movie.)

This is an efficient movie with some neat twists and turns in the solving of a crime. It is largely inoffensive because it is constructed to the well worn formula of finger pointing to a murderer and then seeing just how many things can change your mind before the credits roll.

The acting is reasonable but not sensational with the victim, Barbara (Marcia Gay Harden), being the best at everything in the back story played out throughout the film. Nothing sticks out as faulty, but it is not especially memorable either.

If you like courtrooms and enjoy trying to work crimes out then it is worth a rental.

A glaring omission that should have been present in all movies involving Barbara is the fact that Barbara is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. There's no research showing mentally ill people who can act normal for years and work as a teacher without doing something to attract attention if not legal problems.

This is uninspiring legal drama and the kind of film where the behavior of the characters only adds up in the sense that it serves the script, not in a way that resembles real life. It feels like a rushed job with rather crude characterization, while Bill Pullman looks bored and some of the actors like lost in translation (especially T. Penikett, C.L. Haggquist, N. Oliver). You will like it only if you are close to the age of 60 or above. "Old" ideas, "old" execution and VHS type of movie.

Rating: 5+/6-