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Presumed innocent (Presumed InnocentUnited States/2024). Creator: David E. Kelley. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, Renate Reinsve, Billy Camp, OT Fagbenle, Peter Sarsgaard, Elizabeth Marvel, Chase Infiniti, Kingston Rumi Southwick. Available in: Apple TV. Our opinion: very good.
In 1990, Scott Turrow’s successful novel, published just a few years earlier, reached the cinema presided over by the aura of the erotic thrillers of the time, a style that modeled the cautionary tale like no other. Fatal Attraction, by Adrian Lyne, decalogue of warnings for unfaithful husbands. In that Presumed innocent, starring Harrison Ford, the infidelity of an honest prosecutor culminated in a murder accusation and a humiliating and gruesome judicial process. As in any good example of the genre, the keys were, first, in the identification of the spectator with the accused, his presumed innocence and the suspicions that were dispersed around his inner circle, and second, in the effectiveness of the return of the turkish, that turn that leads the resolution towards the unexpected. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, one of the architects of paranoia cinema in the 70s (with the brilliant Assassins SA at the head), who was in tune with the era yuppie and the anxieties of postmodernism at the dawn of the 90s, the film astutely asserted itself within the contours of judicial cinema.
The new adaptation led by the multifaceted David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, Big Little Lies) adapts Turrow’s text to new times and proposes another approach. Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a high-profile prosecutor in the final stretch of an election race involving his political boss, District Attorney Raymond Horgan (Billy Camp), and his election rival, the opportunistic Nico Della Guardia ( OT Fagbenle). We know little about him before the discovery of the body of Carolyn Polhemus (the excellent Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, star of The worst person in the worldwhich appears here in successive flashbacks) beyond that close dispute for a public office that involves high-sounding statements to the press, political chicanery and abundant manly talk.
Therefore, the discovery of the corpse, with the skull smashed and ritually bound, demands an immediate investigation by Horgan, an investigation that falls into the experienced hands of Sabish. The first clue offers the route of revenge: a lifer who may have orchestrated the brutal revenge from prison. But Sabich does not have much time: the electoral victory of his political opponents places him in the dock.
The first element that Kelley transforms in his adaptation is the construction of the character of Carolyn Polhemus. In the novel, and in Pakula’s version, she turns out to be a cunning femme fatale whose personal ambitions are unraveling like a slow tangle that overshadows her condition as a victim. Sex is a key piece in that idea and Carolyn’s voracity not only concerns places of power but also the lovers who can facilitate them. The character of Renate Rainsve is a different woman, brilliant and reckless, bold in privacy and in the practice of law, admired by colleagues and respected by adversaries. Her bond with Sabich is more than just an occasional infidelity, there is an undercurrent that slowly reveals itself and announces a greater complexity than mere work romance.
There enters a central character in the story who is Barbara Sabich (Ruth Negga), the prosecutor’s wife and mother of his two teenage children, who becomes involved in the scandal when her husband is arrested for the crime. Not only does she lose her job and face public humiliation, but she internally explores her own decisions: having forgiven her deception, prioritizing the integrity of her family, relegating individual desire. her. This line will run parallel to the investigation, concentrating on it a look less tied to the judicial than to the human.
It is clear that this new Presumed innocent It stands out from the paranoid rhythm of the persecution that Harrison Ford suffers in the film for the sin of his betrayal. What interests the miniseries most is the political background that drives the bid for conviction: Della Guardia and his dolphin Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard) wield a sensationalist speech in the name of security that has, in this case, the perfect device to the vindication of a political program. In fact, being a prosecutor who tends to delay proceedings to gain advantage, the decision for a quick trial and a dizzying investigation is his first setback against Sabich and Horgan, the latter turned defense attorney. But what nourishes the tour proposed by Kelley on that original material more concentrated on judicial mechanisms and their traps, is a constant tension between justice and legality.
When suspicions arise of a revenge of a man convicted of rape and murder at the hands of Carolyn Polhemus, Sabich discovers that she withheld evidence to facilitate the conviction because she believed in the guilt of the accused. Can moral certainty be above the law? Her imprint recalls the dark philosophy of Captain Hank Quinlan of thirst for evil (1958), the Orson Welles classic in which going above the law to do good implies an outcome in which everyone loses. It is in these aspects that the series offers something more than a judicial thriller with a twist. Its logic distances itself from the attempt to exonerate Sabich to concentrate on the search for the truth of what happened and the concrete possibility – or not – of doing justice.
