An Innocent Man

An Innocent Man follows Tom Selleck’s Jimmie Rainwood as he’s framed for drug possession by a couple of dirty cops (David Rasche’s Mike Parnell and Richard Young’s Danny Scalise) and sent to prison, with the film primarily detailing Jimmie’s continuing efforts to both adjust and survive within his violent new surroundings. There’s nothing especially groundbreaking or innovative contained within An Innocent Man‘s somewhat overlong running time, and yet the movie is, for the most part, an entertaining, engaging drama that benefits substantially from Selleck’s charismatic (and sympathetic) turn as the central character. Filmmaker Peter Yates, working from Larry Brothers’ screenplay, does a superb job of initially establishing the central character and his plight, while the film boasts a tremendously entertaining midsection revolving around Jimmie’s prison-based exploits – with the character’s ongoing encounters with a vicious lifer (Bruce A. Young’s Jingles) certainly standing as an obvious highlight. (There is, for example, a riveting sequence in which Jimmie finally decides to fight back.) It’s rather unfortunate to note, then, that An Innocent Man closes with an underwhelming and anticlimactic stretch detailing the aforementioned cops’ comeuppance, as the action-oriented nature of this third act feels at odds with all that’s preceded it and ensures that the film ends on a decidedly less-than-stellar note. It’s finally clear that An Innocent Man comes off as an erratic drama that nonetheless works in fits and starts, with the prison scenes strong enough to generally compensate for the overtly weak interludes.

**1/2 out of ****