User reviews

The movie talks an ordinary family man (Tom Selleck) who works as an airplane engineer and married a good woman (Laila Robins) . He's accused by two baddie policemen (David Rashe and Richard Young) as peddler and he's sent to a hard jail . There he is harassed and humiliated until that fury and revenge emerge . He's only helped by a veteran convict (F.Murray Abraham) framed for prison life.

It's an interesting film developed in two parts : in and out of prison . The best part is narrated into prison because of it reflects the astonishing existence of the inmates , with fights, threats ,murders and where rules the strongest's law . In the picture there are suspense, violence, drama , tension and a bit of action in the final confrontation . The picture obtained moderated success , it was not a smash hit neither a flop . Tom Selleck's interpretation is fine but F.Murray Abraham is better , he makes a terrific acting as the veteran con who teaches naive Selleck to take on risks and dangers of the gaol . Many of the film's prison scenes were filmed at the old Hamilton County Jail in Cincinnati, Ohio , also known as the "Cincinnati Workhouse", had been permanently closed prior to the location filming of the movie and it had been built during the Civil War . It was closed due to being "inhumane, cruel and unusual" by modern jail standards . Atmospheric music by Howard Shore who subsequently achieved many hits and one Oscar for ¨Lord of the rings¨. Nice cinematography by William A.Fraker , photographer of various classic films . The motion picture was rightly directed by Peter Yates . The story will appeal to prison genre enthusiasts and Tom Selleck fans.

James Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is a real stand up guy, with a loving wife and in a dream job with a company that just couldn't cope without him. His life is just dandy, That is until two corrupt cops make a mistake and burst into his home believing it to be host to a drug deal. Thinking his hairdryer is a gun, one of the cops shoots Rainwood and it's then that the cops realise they have made a monumental error. So planting drugs around the home they set Rainwood up as a dealer who shot at the cops. Believing justice & honesty will see him OK, Rainwood refuses to cop a plea, and is promptly sentenced to a hell hole prison for six years. Here the affable Rainwood needs to wise up quickly or face a brutal and torrid time in the big house.

Earlier in 1989 we had seen the release of Sly Stallone vehicle Lock Up, a film, that for all its many faults, was a dream come true to the action movie fan who also has a bent for any piece involving incarceration. So up steps Tom Selleck, who after recently showing himself to be a more than effective light entertainer in films such as Three Men and a Baby and Her Alibi, is looking to break out into other, more rounded genres (he also made the quite excellent Quigley Down Under in 1989). For the most part it's a good fit for Selleck and the casting director. The role of Jimmie Rainwood calls for someone charming, elegant and reeking of pure homeliness. That's Selleck without doubt. But the problems for many observers have been, and will be for first time viewers, the transformation of homely Tom into cocksure daddio prison geezer. Thrust into a world of violence and male rape, Rainwood simply must shape up or face a few years of brutality and a stripping of his soul. We know this, and once he starts to be guided by Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham adding a touch of class to a stereotypical role), the film for the rest of the prison sections is sign posted for us. And it's hard to swallow, even for someone like me who is a fan of the film!

As for the other elements in the film, the various sub-plots hold few surprises. Rainwood's wife (Laila Robins) is loving and crusading for her man's release, but writer Larry Brothers has her very much by the numbers. As he does for Badja Djola's Internal Affairs investigator, John Fitzgerald. The latter of which is a real shame as Djola holds his scenes very well and is aching to put more meat into the character. Then there is of course our dirty cops played by Richard Young & David Rasche. Young's Danny Scaliese is the calm thinking one, Rasche's Mike Parnell is the aggressive and borderline psychotic one. It's hard to tell if Rasche is playing it for ham or really attempting to layer the madness lurking within? Either way, it's very entertaining, if ultimately miles away from the brilliance that was his Sledge Hammer! TV series. These cops are of course in desperate need of a fall, the question is if the makers here are merely reverting to formula or do they have some tricks up their sleeves? Well it's directed by Peter Yates and the writer is hardly an inspired scribe, so you do the maths. And lets face it, Selleck is no Stallone - a better actor for sure, but when it comes to shanking and shooting who you gonna call? Rambo or Magnum?

I do like the film a lot, but I love the genre it belongs to anyway. And I literally will watch Abraham in anything. So take my 7/10 rating purely with a pinch of salt and call it a 6/10 time filler if you not be singing of the same page as myself.

an airplane mechanic gets accidently caught up in a bungled drug bust by two bent cops and is sent to prison. Tom Selleck, always calm in his roles seems to take it lying down at first, but when he is constantly picked out by the usual jail hoodlums and is still haunted by the cops who framed him, he can take no more. dont listen to any of the negative comments for this film unless you prefer the comic book jail films like Stallones "Lock Up" (1989) because this film is realistic and the storyline is simple and NOT full of hero prisoners on a revolt who finally get the president himself to give an official pardon. Tom is always great in whatever he does and you can be sure that this is another great effort from him. i love the dialogue...like.."now you dont have a problem with that now...do you white boy" Not your type of movie? i wouldnt bet on that!!!

9/10

I was quite happy to see F Burry Abraham in this, he is a rare gem and can steal the show oft, like in his role in Scarface. However, Sellick was of course the main feature and did well to portray a guy being wronged and thrown into the prison system. Really good movie, pretty enjoyable, fairly realistic. 7/10

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.

This movie is a great example of a character thrust into an awful situation - a situation where you question, "What would I do in his shoes?" For that reason, it is very tense and suspenseful throughout as Tom Selleck's character tries to navigate prison life. I really felt for his character - his acting was great. Sure, there are some moments of cheesy lines and overdone composing and a bit of over-acting by the various villains, but for the most part, this is one of the better character thrillers I've seen in awhile. Selleck is great, as if the man who befriends him inside the prison. Can't find anything new to watch? I recommend checking out this little gem from 1989!

I think this was a good film about being framed and getting revenge. Tom Selleck is great in his role as the title character. Two crooked cops make a mistake (in more ways than one) when they go to the wrong address expecting to find a drug dealer, break into his house, mistake a hair dryer he is carrying for a gun, and shoot him. They then realize that they are at the wrong house and try to amend their mistake by framing Selleck as a drug dealer. Everything goes their way, and Selleck winds up in prison. Three years later, he is paroled and seeks revenge. During those three years, he is faced with the harsh realities of prison life and is beaten up more than once. F. Murray Abraham is there for him, fortunately, and helps him survive. (Abraham plays another inmate.) I liked this film even though it did follow a formula and was a typical revenge type movie. It was a great role for Selleck, who was perfect in his part.

** 1/2 out of ****

A law abiding airplane mechanic is caught in a drug sting by a couple of dishonest cops and finds out that even being innocent isn't good enough to keep him out of trouble.

Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abrams, and Bruce A. Young give excellent, honest performances in this all too believable tale of prison life. Having no where to turn but Virgil Cane, another con; Jimmie Rainwood learns from Jingles that life on the "inside" isn't like his old life and he must learn new skills to survive. Jimmies wife, Kate, works as hard outside to get him freed and this tale of lies, and struggle challenges each of us to examine our survival instincts. Trust is no longer taken for granted. An excellent movie to make you think! One of Tom's best performances

I thought this movie would seriously put me in a dark mood, but I found that I liked it -- a lot. I was surprised by how much I liked this film. This is a very good "B" movie, and I enjoyed just about all of it -- the affectionate scenes between Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) and his wife, the scenes with the two corrupt cops, the scenes with Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), the scene at the beginning with Rainwood assuring his boss that the jet airliner his people are working on will be fixed on time, and even the scenes in prison, especially those with Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham), but I even enjoyed the black-gang scenes (because I was rooting for Jimmie to get mad and take his tormentors down). Can you tell that I was entertained? :-)

This is the kind of movie to rent if you're in the mood to watch a good and truly innocent man get knocked around by nasty people you'll seriously love to hate (crooked cops AND prison gang members), watch the guy suffer a bit, and then watch him get back on his feet and get his revenge on his tormentors (without losing his humanity). The characters and situations may be a bit cliché, but I don't care. The movie reminds you, as one prisoner tells Jimmie Rain after he gets to prison, that there are times when you don't have to stand tall, but you do have to stand up. Rent this and watch Rainwood learn, under Virgil's guidance, how to stand up.

Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer. Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer.

This is a very unconventional action film, with a good guy turned into a threat. I suppose that's not too strange, a man driven to the edge. But here we have a guy who goes from innocent to killer and beyond, making it his business to crush a pair of corrupt cops.

While corrupt cops exist, this film goes out of its way to make the duo as sleazy and hated as possible. My goodness, I just felt rage in my soul about these two guys, so I have to give the actors credit for really coming across as jerks. Selleck was also great, though it was a shame he had to go from good to bad in order to make it through the story.

In my 35 years on earth, I've been to just 2 movies that aroused an actual standing ovation from the audience in the theater: Speed & An Innocent Man. I was only 9 years old when this movie came out, so it's only right to first thank my parents for always allowing me and my brother the privilege to see "R" rated movies at such a young age.

There's just something about this movie that stirs up your emotions like none other. While some might call this a "B" movie, to me, the acting is just so real to life and spot on, much more realistic than say for people who are more purists when it comes to the art of movies.

There are several stand out performances here. David Rasche to me, should have won an Oscar for his role as one of two the dirty cops. He probably plays my favorite bad guy role of all-time, is just plain masterful every time he comes on the screen. Anybody who can make a bad guy like-able by being so over the top corrupt, you know there's something special going on.

Bruce Young as Jingles was another all-time classic character, another charismatic villain with a sparkle of gleam in his eyes. F. Murray Abraham was fantastic, as he delivers one of the best ending lines to a movie of all-time.

Honestly everybody who participated in An Innocent Man was on their A game, I can mention every single character here. I can talk about this movie forever, give you a standard IMDb review but I am not going to. I will simply say that if you really haven't seen this movie, you are missing out on something very magical.

This is my favorite prison movie ever made, slightly better than Shawshank for how down to earth it was. If it doesn't rattle your emotions you must be some type of surrogate. That, or a spiritual robot....

First off, let me say that it's offensive that this film is set in Long Beach, which had a 40% Latino population in 1990 and probably an even larger share of the prison population than that, yet the demographics of the prison seem to be 70% white/30% black. Not a single visibly Latino character to be found.

Nice whitewashing, guys. You could have literally set it almost anywhere - North Dakota, Connecticut, Alaska - and it probably would have been more demographically accurate. Why Southern California?

Also I doubt the white gangs in prison would let one of their own get manhandled like this even if he didn't join their team? The movie is has quite strong racist undertones implicit in its implausible setup.

Anyway, the movie is an effective anti-police film. That's surprising for Tom Selleck, who seems to be a Republican, would agree to such a thing, but I guess he's more objective than most and doesn't blindly pay lip service to police. Got to watch the watchmen because ugly things can happen when you don't.

Selleck's character is framed for a crime he didn't commit and the police plant some stuff on him so they don't risk their jobs. It could totally happen - people selling you our just to protect such a slight interest as a job or some profits - who cares? He can't do anything anyway, right?

In prison he has to lay down his old morals and ethics and come into touch with his primal masculine side. Eventually he's let out on parole.

If the movie ended there, it would have been an effective "Call of the Wild"-type situation where an animal goes back to his basic roots. It might have been a 9 or a 10.

Unfortunately, it continues and goes into the territory of moustache-twirling stock villains and shootouts at around the 60% mark.

The first part is excellent though. I could totally see it happening to someone in real life and it probably has happened lots of times. The desire to keep one's small benefits or to not risk one's hide is powerful even if you have to ruin someone else's life to do it. It could happen to you. It could happen to me.

Honourable Mentions: Life (1999). About two black men who get sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit by corrupt policemen. A better movie and probably a more common and realistic situation than this one.

It's a (yawn) revenge crime drama set in 1980s southern California. It follows a man who has successfully worked as an airline maintenance engineer for American Airlines for 12 years and gets into trouble with crooked cops.

Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) and his wife, Kate (Laila Robins), live in Long Beach. They live a picture-perfect life and are planning a vacation trip to Thailand. Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young) are two crooked narcotics cops who routinely steal some of the drugs they seize during arrests. One night when Jimmie is home alone, they mistakenly raid his house and accidentally shoot him. While he's still unconscious, they decide to frame him by planting a gun and some drugs.

Jimmie is convicted and sent to prison. There he encounters Virgil Caine (F. Murray Abraham), a mobster in prison for the long term. Virgil helps Jimmie survive against gang leaders like Jingles (Bruce A. Young).

When Jimmie gets out, Parnell and Scalise threaten him, so he decides to take revenge, though it doesn't turn out quite as he anticipated.

This movie is bad. The script includes one hoodlum cliché after another, and the characters are primarily stereotypes following a plot that beggars belief. It sounded like a green scriptwriter's first draft. The one exception is F. Murray Abraham. The direction is remarkably bad, too, for a well-known director.

Tom Selleck is absolutely fabulous in this movie! Hollywood usually is very bad with jailhouse movies. They tend to go to extremes when depicting what it's like to suddenly lose your freedom and always neglect to portray the mind-numbing boredom, lack of privacy and constant noise that is for years part of a prisoners daily life. Having spent time in prison myself may make me a bit biased in favor of a movie where a convict actually gets revenge on the cops who set him up-so be it. I can remember only one other movie as good as this that came close to showing the reality of prison life and that was 'Short Eyes' a movie filmed in the Tombs in Manhattan-a place where I was a guest more than once. Check out the wonderful performance of F. Murray Abraham in this flick as the tough old con that give Selleck advice on how to survive in prison. Jailhouse movies made in Hollywood always seem patently phony to me as a rule-like some director's idea of what he thinks jail should be. This one is a huge exception to that rule. I recommend it highly and think you'll like it.

Ordinary Joe (Tom Selleck) is in the right house at the wrong time when two scummy cops invade his residence to arrest him for drugs; of course the guy 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 vat of melodramatic clichés in the clink. It's a trap for the lead character as well as the audience. Peter Yates directed, hoping to spare us none of the horrors and humiliations of life in the jug. The movie is played for the sensational, and yet some viewers actually bought into it (the picture grossed just over $20M at the domestic box office). Perhaps they're too young to know it has all been done before. *1/2 from ****

Riveting entertainment of someone accused of a crime that they didn't commit and how the system can be tainted or shuffled against you on a whim. The shocking part is there is nothing you can do about it. I suppose that is why it takes 13 years to execute someone in this country too. We want to be sure before we take a life. Good story, acting and plausible more times than not. The characters draw you in and you either hate them or root for them, but sitting still is not an option with your emotions in full play. This movie activates the emotions. There are plot holes, but we trade them for the raw adventure to be found in watching the movie and joining the characters. There are 4 movies that depict life in prison accurately. 1. American Me 2. Blood In Blood Out 3. The Glass House and this one. If you want to scare someone straight, there is the line-up to remind them to behave them selves now or fight for your life later. This movie also reminds us of how power and money can rule and how we end up serving those things. Then, they finish us off all the worst for it. Catch this movie without interruptions, have a snack ready, and be entertained. I did a bowl of home made double roasted sunflower seeds. I recommend this over biting your nails or smoking to relieve the tension found in this movie at times...Bon Voyage