In the new, TV movie version of "Innocent," Scott Turow's 2010 sequel to his 1987 blockbuster "Presumed Innocent," Sabich, now an appellate judge, has a couple of extra decades of compromise on his shoulders, the biggest being his continued cohabitation with wife Barbara.
But he has the same basic problem to confront: The author, in a kind of crime-fiction double jeopardy, has contrived to again get his antihero charged with murdering a woman very close to him. Kindle County — a place similar to Cook County, where Turow still supplements his career as a novelist with a side job as a partner in a downtown Chicago law firm — is apparently no place for a quiet courtroom life.
Ford's Sabich, in the 1990 Alan J. Pakula film, was a brooding, heavy, fundamentally masculine presence. Pullman's is a little more cerebral, more reserved, hiding his feelings, and possibly his wounds, behind a steady half-smile that could be seen as cocky or protective.
But both editions of Sabich manage to make you think the man may have enough darkness in him to have done exactly the horrific thing he is charged with, even as you know this would violate most rules of popular storytelling.
While the contrasts between two fine actors are interesting, Pullman, alas, is in a film that doesn't carry the same weight. The first in a new mystery movie franchise for TNT, which already runs several series about the law ("The Closer," "Rizzoli & Isles," even "Law & Order" reruns), "Scott Turow's Innocent" follows the outlines of the novel but never quite achieves the sense of moment of either its source material or its big-screen predecessor.
This happens despite a stellar cast that also includes Marcia Gay Harden as the bipolar Barbara Sabich, Richard Schiff ("The West Wing") as Sabich nemesis Tommy Molto, now Kindle County's chief prosecuting attorney, and Alfred Molina as Rusty's defense attorney and friend, Sandy Stern.
We open on the scene that sets everything in motion: Rusty Sabich at the bedside of his deceased wife, where, we learn, he will leave her for 24 hours before calling authorities. Before the toxicology comes in and Molto and an eager young assistant get on the case, it is ruled a heart attack.
Meanwhile, in flashback, we see the new contours of Rusty's life. His adult son Nat (Callard Harris), after some trouble getting his life in order, is following his father into the law. Sabich has an infatuated law clerk (Mariana Klaveno from "True Blood") about to move into her first private-practice job.
And Rusty and Barbara had stayed together despite what they learned about one another at the time of the events in "Presumed Innocent," including Rusty's trial on charges of murdering a colleague and ex-lover.
"Sixty," Sabich says, "is a tough age to reach knowing that love is for other people."
The pleasures of Turow's novels come from his careful, complex plotting, insight into the law and the people who shape it, and graceful, almost formal writing style. Sex, in his world, carries heavy consequences, and resolutions are rarely tidy or what they at first seem. Like John le Carre's spy novels, these are crime stories for people whose reading interests run deeper than mass-market paperbacks.
"Innocent" was a worthy addition to North Shore resident Turow's body of work, all the more so for revisiting characters who resonated so powerfully with readers in their first appearance but whose passions have been replaced, mostly, by regrets and an awareness of life's ambiguities.
Sabich was compelling then because he was never a completely sympathetic character. And in "Innocent," his decision to stay married for, in his mind, his easily bruised son and wife could also be read as a choice made mostly to protect his public reputation. Which he then threatens to destroy with another, hastier choice.
But where "Presumed Innocent" had the classic components of cinematic murder stories — lurid sex, a femme fatale, a jealous spouse, rope — the sequel hinges more on things that are better explained in print: drug interactions, Barbara's computer expertise, the self-recrimination of an intelligent man knowingly repeating a history that almost got him condemned.
And writer/director Mike Robe, who has directed for TV two other Turow novels, "The Burden of Proof" (1992) and "Reversible Errors" (2004), doesn't offer much beyond what the author has put on the page — and often feels hurried to get that much in.
It is competently, professionally done, as you would expect from a man who has directed dozens of TV movies. The story is satisfying, an intellectual cut above many TV mysteries. And a cast like this will always be worth watching.
But you want something more, even allowing for the constricted budget of the smaller screen: sharper visuals, perhaps; a soundtrack that isn't so insistent on shaping your emotions; a TV-reporter character who isn't so noticably unlike any real TV reporter; reaction shots that aren't presented in the cinematic equivalent of yellow highlighter.
Above all, what you want is an interpretation of the novel, rather than merely a rendering, and a restoration of the soulfulness that makes it special.
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