An Innocent Man

A prison film. Jimmie Rainwood is an aircraft mechanic. He lives an ordinary life with his wife and has nothing to do with crime. One evening the police come into his house. The address is wrong; two narcotics officers raid the wrong place, and when they understand what has happened they cover it rather than admit it. They leave drugs in the house and give their statements accordingly. Jimmie gets six years. The film's second part takes place entirely inside. The man tries to keep to the rules; instead of protecting him the rules make him a target. An older prisoner explains to him what staying alive there involves, and the advice runs against everything he knows. What the narrative is interested in is not innocence but what an innocent man has to become to survive: the film does not hide that the man who comes out is not the man who went in. In the third part he is outside, and the two officers are still serving. Tom Selleck plays Jimmie; at the time he was known from television and associated with easy roles, and this one goes the other way. F. Murray Abraham plays the older prisoner. Peter Yates directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the hard prison dramas of the 1980s. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an ending where justice works; the film leaves the solution to the character rather than the system, and does not question that.