Presumed innocent abandons courtroom intrigue for domestic strife.
Ally McBeal and Boston Legal demonstrated that Kelley is a writer and showrunner capable of juggling the mundanity of daily living with the high drama of a court battle. Presumed Innocent, on the other hand, gets the balance all off. That's so because its emphasis is more on the elements of Kelley's prior works, Big Little Lies and The Undoing, about affluent families coping with unimaginable atrocities. Though it was a more gripping tale about corruption in our justice system, Turow's book featured certain of those aspects. Kelley's family-oriented adaption so loses what made Presumed Innocent such a compulsive book.
Presumed Innocent reminds us that his family haven't forgiven him for having an affair, even as it should be concentrated on Rusty's lawyers developing their defense against the circumstantial evidence of the prosecution. Presumed Innocent was written in 1987, hence the way the book treats women seems out of date. Thus, even if a modern, progressive adaptation would want to correct this, the show ties itself in knots trying to give Rusty's wife Barbara (Ruth Negga) a fascinating story of her own.
Presumed Innocent Is at Its Best in the Courtroom
Presumed Innocent's best scenes are those about Rusty's trial, which show the back-and-forth exchanges between the prosecution and the defense in the run-up to presenting before a jury. Thanks to the four primary performances of Gyllenhaal, Camp, Sarsgaard, and O-T Fagbenle (The Handsmaid's Tale), the political interactions are intriguing to see As Judge Lytle, Noma Dumezweni is superb in controlling the petty fighting of the opposing counsels. When Barbara tells Negga why she won't participate with the doting wife act the defense lawyer has asked, Negga also gets her best scene on the show.
Presumed Innocent's lack of trust in the courtroom sequences to carry most of the drama is aggravating. The Apple Tv+ series can't resist inventing more theatrical flourishes, even if the trial opens in earnest in episode 6 and the testimony and cross-examination scenes are quite gripping. One especially horrible example of a cheap shock that only helps to ruin what was eventually becoming a fascinating courtroom drama is the cliffhanger ending in episode 6.
Jake Gyllenhaal Makes Innocence Hard to Presume
For Jake Gyllenhaal, Presumed Innocent is a star vehicle; nevertheless, his portrayal lacks the uncertainty the play demands. Gyllenhaal portrays Rusty with a degree of barely suppressed wrath and, occasionally, pure spite and savage anger. An audience cannot so separate Rusty's darker eruptions from the presumption of innocence. Presumed Innocent disappointingly never shows that tension in a significant way since the scripts hardly allow Gyllenhaal to stress his more sympathetic traits, therefore showcasing Rusty's duality.
We don't know if Rusty did it or not since just the first seven episodes of Presumed Innocent have been available for assessment. This is not to suggest Gyllenhall performs poorly. Watching Rusty's fixation on Carolyn, given via flashbacks and meant to suggest he killed her in a fit of passion, is quite disturbing. Late in the series, a particularly memorable scene depicts variations on Rusty and Carolyn's last exchange; Gyllenhaal gently modulates his tone and gestures to mirror Rusty's shattered memories.
Said to be innocent: a mixed bag
Though tragically it falls short, the idea of David E. Kelley adapting Scott Turow's Courtroom Thriller makes Presumed Innocent an appealing potential. Like Kelley's most recent Netflix series A Man in Full, the AppleTV+ drama makes analogues with the media circus around former president and convicted criminal Donald Trump. Presumed Innocent is propelled by a politically motivated trial spurred by marital adultery and impropriety, hence the June 12 launch date of the drama cannot be more positioned to appeal to the zeitgeist.
Presumed Innocent revolves on fellow prosecutor Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve), whose life is flipped upside down when suspected of the horrible murder of her mistress, and hotshot prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal, also executive producer). Kelley might have been the perfect person to transform Turow's Courtroom Thriller into an eight-part miniseries, as the showrunner who provided us with legendary court dramas like Ally McBeal and Boston courtroom, but that's not the conclusion I arrived to after seeing.
An Interpretive Synopsis of Presumed Innocent
Strong performances all around anchor Presumed Innocent, and amongst its opposing lawyers movie features some electrifying trial scenes. Its primary dilemma, meanwhile, is not knowing whether it should be a judicial conspiracy drama, a personal drama about adultery and secret knowledge, or an erotic thriller about obsession and desire. Both the book and the original Harrison Ford film succeeded in coherently tying together these components. Sadly for Kelley's interpretation of Presumed Innocent, the connections among these three components are at best circumstantial.
Gyllenhaal stars as chief deputy prosecutor Rusty Sabich, guiding viewers on an engrossing trip through the brutal murder that disturbs the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney's office when one of its own is suspected of the crime.
