6300th Review!!! – Innocent (2011)

“Sixty is a tough age to reach knowing that love is for other people.” – Rusty Sabich

Number of Times Seen – Twice (7 Dec 2011 and 16 Mar 2020)

Brief Synopsis – Twenty years after being acquitted for murder, now-judge Rusty Savage must prove his is innocent of his wife’s death when foul play is suspected.

My Take on it – This is a film that I recall seeing not long after it premiered on TV back in 2011.

They do a nice job continuing the stories of these characters that we have gotten to know over the past twenty years and see where their lives have now taken them following the events of the previous stories/movies.

Love the way that this story shows that even after two decades, so many parts of life are still connected and sometimes allow for things of a cyclical nature to occur.

Bill Pullman takes over the role originated by Harrison Ford and he does a nice job with it even though his performance doesn’t even come close to matching that of his predecessor..

The story is slightly too tame for its own good in certain respects and the lean run time of just 90 minutes also is quite limiting because they never have a chance to really flesh out and develop some of these characters.

That being said, knowing some of the histories of these characters actually helps in that respect.

Certain scenes feel far too rushed tho and that takes away from making this even more thrilling or engaging.

This film’s biggest asset tho is Richard Schiff who takes over the role of Tommy Molto from Joe Grifasi.

Schiff plays this character in a way that redeems any of his character’s past acts and shows how much integrity and good this character has in his nature and personality.

This helps make the viewer like the character more due to the way he conducts himself throughout.

Alfred Molina is also great here taking over the Sandy Stern role previously played by Raul Julia and Hector Elizondo.

His performance seems to pay homage to Julia’s take on the character and it’s nice to see how that character has developed over the course of these films and in between.

He seems to have never lost his legal or litigation abilities and comes across quite powerfully here.

This story is able to give us some nice twists along with a few red herrings along the way to raise the level of suspense and keep things interesting and intriguing from start to finish.

Bottom Line – Interesting continuation of the story of these characters. Love the way that even after two decades, the story shows that life is cyclical. Pullman does a nice job in the lead role but still doesn’t manage to match Ford’s performance in the role twenty years earlier. The story is a bit tame in certain aspects and the lean run time of 90 minutes doesn’t help make things even more engaging to watch. The biggest asset to this film is Schiff as Molto because he is so much better in this role than Grifasi was in the original film. He is able to redeem his character’s personality and integrity from that story and make the audience like the way he conducts himself throughout. Molina is also quite good here taking over the role of Stern previously played by Julia and Elizondo. It’s easy to see that he bases his performance on Julia and gives credit to the character having aged twenty years yet not having lost his litigation and legal abilities. The story has some nice twists and red herrings along the way that help keep things nice and suspenseful. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Mike Robe also directed “The Burden of Proof (1992)”–also a sequel to “Presumed Innocent (1990)”–that focused on the character Sandy Stern, played by Hector Elizondo. (In “Innocent,” Stern is played by Alfred Molina.) The characters of Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto did not appear in that film, but Brian Dennehy, who had played Raymond Horgan in “Presumed Innocent (1990),” appeared in a different role. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)