pkgoode-536-671280
Joined Nov 2012
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Reviews17
pkgoode-536-671280's rating
Plodding and overlong adaptation of his own novel by director Michael Crichton, notable mainly for Donald Sutherland's ridiculous accent and a stupid amount of labored double entendres. Really, just about anyone could improve Train Robbery by editing out a random twenty minutes. Sean Connery looks understandably bored from the get-go and can't seem to summon up more than a mailed-in performance; Sutherland's mannerisms are tedious and unfunny. Lesley-Anne Warren's character is literally a sex object-possibly (but doubtfully) amusing at one time, but today downright offensive. Not even the Irish countryside can rescue this turkey from the moviecrit chopping block.
The underlying premise of this loose adaptation of Scott Turow's 1987 best-seller appears to be that every defendant deserves a presumption of innocence, self-absorbed and reckless though he may be. True enough, but does this point require eight increasingly melodramatic episodes focused on a uniquely unsympathetic character's ongoing missteps and betrayals? Still, Presumed Innocent moves along and benefits from strong performances by Peter Sarsgaard as the lead prosecutor and especially O-T Fagbenle as the smarmy, political animal DA who nurses doubts about the prosecution strategy. Marred by an unsatisfying conclusion and what surely must be the most whiny and self-aggrieved closing argument in the history of courtroom dramas.