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Great Film overall

Fresh and Exciting

Better than most people think

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I think An Innocent Man proved that whenever he decided to end his Magnum PI series, Tom Selleck was going to have no trouble in getting good parts. And not those that were a variation on his Thomas Magnum persona.This is one really powerful film about An Innocent Man getting caught in the criminal justice machinery because of a pair of dirty cops, David Rasche and Richard Young. These two who are decorated heroes in the Long Beach PD for all the arrests they rack up are actually just putting out of business all the independents in the narcotics trade for the local organized crime boss and making a nice side living in the process.They get an address wrong from an informant and they invade Selleck's home, shoot and wound Selleck, and then plant evidence to make Selleck out as a dealer. He gets convicted and sentenced to six years hard time and I do mean hard which it is for anyone who's not a professional in the criminal trade.Fortunately he gets himself a mentor in old time con F. Murray Abraham who also has a score to settle with those two cops. Abraham teaches him all the new rules for survival in the joint, housed with men who are by nature incorrigible and don't play by civilized rules. Selleck does things that were against his old nature.When he does get paroled from inside the joint Abraham quarterbacks a revenge scheme that Selleck participates in.Besides those mentioned I should also single out Laila Robins who plays Selleck's wife who stands by him and Bruce Young who plays a violent convict that Selleck has to deal with in the joint.An Innocent Man is one of the best made for television films done and should have gotten big screen theatrical release.

Ordinary Joe Tom Selleck is in the right house at the wrong time when two scummy cops invade his home to arrest him for drugs; Selleck is clean, the cops made a mistake, so they rectify their gaffe by planting the goods on him. Next stop: the courtroom (where an ages-old marijuana infraction rears its ugly head), and eventually the Big House. Once Selleck is behind bars, plotting to clear his good name, the picture falls into that timeworn, melodramatic vat of jailhouse clichés. It's a trap for the character as well as the audience. Peter Yates directed, hoping to spare us none of the horrors and humiliations of life in the jug. It's played for the sensational...and yet some viewers actually get caught up in it. Perhaps they're too young to know it has all been done before. *1/2 from ****

The name Peter Yates is not bandied around a great deal amongst movie fans, which is quite surprising since he is the director who brought us such fondly remembered classics as Summer Holiday, Bullitt and The Hot Rock. Yates is also behind the camera on this Tom Selleck vehicle, but there's little here to remind one of the halcyon days of his earlier classics. If anything, An Innocent Man has about it the air of a competent but totally uninspired made-for-TV prison drama (in actual fact, this is not a TV-movie but a major big-screen release, complete with relatively big stars). It is not a bad film, merely one that never rises above mediocrity at any point.Airline mechanic Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) leads a normal life. He works nine-to-five like any ordinary citizen, pays his bills, and loves his wife Kate (Laila Robins). His existence is shattered when two narcotics cops mistakenly raid his house and shoot him. The cops, Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young), have been holding back drugs from some of their busts and selling them privately for big bucks. They were only in Rainwood's house because of an address mix-up linked to another bust. Fearing their profitable scam might be exposed unless they take drastic action, Scalise and Parnell plant narcotics in Rainwood's house and make it look like they were there on a legitimate raid. As a result, Jimmie is convicted of a crime he never committed and sent to a tough penitentiary for several years. While her husband is inside, Kate works tirelessly to clear his name, bringing in honest cop John Fitzgerald (Badja Djola) to investigate her suspicions of police corruption. But it's a slow process, and in the meantime Jimmie must learn to survive in the dangerous prison environment. A tough, experienced convict called Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham) teaches him how to cope, but Rainwood's peaceful life prior to imprisonment makes him struggle to adapt to his new surroundings. After many hardships – including having to kill a prison bully – Jimmie is finally released. Hardened by his experience, he sets out to track down the dirty duo that set him up in the first place.There's nothing hugely wrong with the basic story (scripted by Larry Brothers) other than the fact that it is somewhat familiar. The problems with An Innocent Man are more to do with issues regarding the general handling of the film. In the acting stakes no-one gives a really strong performance; in the music department Howard Shore provides a bland, lazy score; photographically the film is totally conventional and "play-safe"; and in the directing stakes, Yates goes about his job in strictly by-the-numbers fashion. When thinking about the film afterwards, words like "inconsequential", "unmemorable", "unremarkable" and "routine" spring to mind. Nothing about it stands out in a good nor bad way – it's just typical 5-out-of-10 fodder from first frame to last. One of the main purposes of the film seems to be to give the star a more hard-edged role than usual, but apart from dollops of foul language and extra fake blood during the fighting sequences, it's still Tom Selleck playing Tom Selleck. An Innocent Man is easy to watch - it's even easier to forget.

I never cared for Magnum P.I. and I had no hand in the rental of this film when my friend brought it home from the video store for all of us to watch, so I didn't know what to expect. ***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***All-in-all not a bad 'payback' film, although nowhere near the league of 'The Shawshank Redemption'. Basically, it's the familiar story of a man who's wrongly accused of dealing drugs after a couple of crooked cops set him up when a drug bust goes awry. Of course, Selleck comes out the better man, toughened by prison life and seeks his revenge on the 'bad' cops. Not a bad story.... 6/10