Posted in: Apple, TV | Tagged: apple tv, david e kelley, harrison ford, jake gyllenhaal, presumed innocent, scott turow

Presumed Innocent Finale Changes Raise Some Serious Questions

Apple TV+'s adaptation of Presumed Innocent makes some BIG changes from the book and 1990 movie that could make for a brutal second season.

Presumed Innocent ended its first season this week with the reveal of the killer, and true to showrunner David E. Kelley's promise, it changes the revelation from the book. That raises some interesting questions for the series now that Apple TV+ decided that this was not a one-off miniseries but an ongoing series with a second season greenlit. Warning: we won't tell you who the killer is in either the Apple TV+ series or the 1990 movie Presumed Innocent starring Harrison Ford, but there are thoughts about what the new reveal means for series protagonist Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal), especially if he's going to be the main character in the next season.

Author Scott Turow launched the legal thriller as a viable bestselling book genre back in the 1980s with Presumed Innocent as his first novel, which became a bestselling sensation at the time. He paved the way for John Grisham to become the other bestselling author of legal thrillers, but Turow is the one considered high-end because of his ability to plot a murder whodunnit and courtroom drama with philosophical questions about the ethical dilemmas of the law and the prosecuting crimes.

In case you haven't watched but are thinking about it, Rusty Sabich is a hotshot prosecutor who gets accused and tried for the murder of his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve). Rusty's fellow prosecutor Tommy Molto (Peter Skarsgaad) has cause to accuse and bring him to trial for the murder: Rusty and Carolyn were lovers and he might have killed her perhaps because she was threatening to break up his marriage if his wife (Ruth Negga) found out.

Like the 1990 movie, Rusty spends the story fighting for his life and to prove his innocence, or at least introduce enough reasonable doubt to convince a jury not to find him guilty. Nobody comes off as heroic in this story. Rusty is ambitious, cunning, narcissistic and self-serving. Tommy Motlo might be compromised by his own unreciprocated feelings for Carolyn Polhemus and could be harboring jealousy and resentment towards Rusty.

Presumed Innocent – Then and Now

The 1990 movie, directed by Alan Pakula, who directed classic 1970s thrillers Klute and The Parallax View, was faithful to the book and banked on star Harrison Ford's stoical everyman persona to maintain the audience's belief that Rusty is innocent of the murder so while the question was there in the audience's mind, nobody watching really believed he was the killer. In the Apple TV+ series, Jake Gyllenhaal has an oddball, unpredictable ambiguity about him that the series plays up to make viewers wonder if he might be the killer after all. Pakula's movie, which is hardly discussed but a respectable A-list Hollywood adult drama that's incredibly rare these days, ends with Rusty compromised morally, ethically and emotionally, and the Apple TV+ version has a similar ending but different nuances and implications.

There's also a difference in the plot of the Apple TV+ version of Presumed Innocent, which follows the common trope of television these days in emphasizing the personal story of the main character and the emotional impact the legal peril has on his marriage and his family where the book and movie concentrated more on legal ethics and dirty laundry. That emphasis on family is a clear influence on how Kelley decides to change the ending of the series, including who the killer turns out to be. Where the book and the movie ended with Rusty standing over a moral, ethical, and legal abyss where he ends up betraying the law he idealistically believes in, Kelley's ending makes things even more existentially horrific. Rusty turns out to have deliberately tampered with the murder scene from the start. Rusty feels justified, and when the final twist of who the killer is, Rusty is less distraught and horrified than in the movie version. Instead, he immediately calms down and calculates how he's going to play the whole thing entirely in a way that is self-serving.

When the "Hero" of a Story is a Despicable Monster

If this version of Presumed Innocent just ended in this one season, it would have been a satisfyingly bleak ending, far bleaker than the book or movie. The issue is, can you have a second season of a TV show with a protagonist who's revealed to be a cold, self-serving sociopath? Gyllenhaal plays Rusty as a man who can compartmentalize his emotions and coldly calculate and plot his way out of a problem to save his ass, exploiting the loopholes of the legal system to serve his ends. In other words, he's a privileged monster, another white guy who thinks he deserves to get away with anything. It could be an allegory for the times, and the series has apparently been both popular and critically acclaimed, but Rusty is revealed at the end of season one to be utterly despicable, not grudgingly lovable like Tony Soprano was.

Presumed Innocent is streaming on Apple TV+.

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