Presumed Innocent

I watched the 1990 Harrison Ford movie "Presumed Innocent" the other day for the first time. It was not a movie I was familiar with. It seems like I had heard of it but maybe took it as another one of his Tom Clancy movies...they all seem to run together for me. Anyway, I actually stopped and watched it the other day for the first time.

By about 20 minutes in I was almost ready to give up because it was looking to shape up like most Harrison Ford movies. Excluding American Graffitti and the Indiana Jones movies, he always seems to play the same guy. The stressed-out, slightly angry, teetering on the edge, wrongfully accused guy attempting to clear his name or something close to that. Now, he did a good job of playing that guy in "The Fugitive" but I don't think he ever got out of that role...maybe he just had it perfected by then. I don't know, but "Presumed Innocent" was shaping up to be the same ole song and dance. I hung around because I like Raul Julia. And I had nothing better to do.

I also wanted to just scream and throw something extremely large at the television and the victim. She was the typical beauty who slept with every man she met on her way to the top. She was apparently supposed to be super ambitious and smart yet felt it necessary to sleep with everyone!! Why must they make women like this? I guess because there really are women out there like that. No morals, no conscious, no respect for anything other than getting on top (of everything and everyone).

It also drove me nuts that for some reason no man could say no to her! All she had to do was give them a seductive glance and every man was cheating on his wife, blowing off his kid, you name it  - just to have a liason with this woman. And then there was the ignorant wife who even though she knew about his affair, hung around because she loved him! Seriously? Arrggghhh! That is so frustrating to me. I am sorry, but cheating, lying, with-holding the full truth are all deal breakers. Sorry - it just is.

So even with all these frustrating and stupid stereo-types, the victim had slept with enough people that it made for a really good mystery as to who finally could take it no more and killed her and why. So, over all I was glad I hung in there because it had a pretty good twist ending -I had pegged the wrong person!  It is definately worth a viewing if you have not ever seen it.