Better Late Than Never: Presumed Innocent

 

 

I’m not so much surprised that David E. Kelley is behind Apple’s Presumed Innocent as I am that it’s taken him this long to finally turn  to a limited series. This is, after all, the man who became a household name with his work on LA Law and spent the next twenty years revitalizing the courtroom drama to the point that when he finally got to Harry’s Law he was clearly running out of things to say.

Perhaps that’s the reason that he has spent so much time with the works of Lianne Moriarty ever since he returned to form; he didn’t want to risk falling into old patterns. He’s come close to it over the last few years, sometimes at the expense of the original work’s merit (The Undoing), sometimes giving it energy (Love & Death). But finally this past year in between writing the most recent season of Nine Perfect Strangers he managed to get to work on his version of the novel that put Scott Turow on the map and was made it to a hit film for Harrison Ford in 1990. While that movie was generally superb, it’s clear after the first three episodes that not only has Kelley and his cast justified the update, but that it is yet another argument as to why limited series should be the de facto starting point for almost any literary adaptation going forward.

The basic plot is still the same: Cook County ADA Rusty Sabich (played by Jake Gyllenhaal)  learns in the opening minutes that his colleague Carolyn Polhemus has been murdered. He learns that she has been strangled, possibly sexually assaulted and tied up in the manner of a former case. His boss Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp, taking over masterfully from the role Brian Dennehy perfected) puts Rusty on the case even though Rusty has a conflict of interest which his wife Barbara points out: “All the Das in the office; they couldn’t find one who didn’t sleep with her?”  Barbara knows Rusty and Carolyn had an affair but she believes Rusty ended it, and they have kept it quiet from their children to this point. That will very quickly become the least of their problems.

The more immediate one is that Raymond is running for reelection against one of the colleagues he mentored Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle) who offers support in private and uses it as a bludgeon to campaign against it on TV. Rusty has less than ten days to come up with anything and he finds nothing to go on, except the barest of leads. It’s not clear whether he’s genuinely stonewalled or he’s trying to keep De La Guardia’s top lieutenant Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard) a man who we start out loathing and who very quickly becomes the monster we expect. On election day Della Guardia wins and Molto takes over. The day he does Rusty is called in to go over in the investigation and Molto lets him know about his fingerprints and DNA at the office – and the fact that when Carolyn died, she was pregnant.

Raymond is stunned by this, not only because Rusty withheld this information from him but because he had no idea the affair was going on at all. This quickly becomes the least of the problems Rusty is facing as he now must tell his wife not only did he not end the affair when he said he did but Carolyn was the one who ended it and he spent much of the last several weeks repeatedly texting and emailing her to the point that he says it will seem like he was stalking her. Then he has to inform his children – who didn’t know about the affair at all – and has to face repercussions from his therapist (Lily Rabe) who is angry that he has been lying to her all this time. Raymond becomes increasingly desperate and infuriating because of the lies he’s been telling and the forensic evidence becomes worse and worse.

Eventually he turns to Raymond as his defense attorney (a slight variation from the novel) and Raymond does so against the advice of his wife Lorraine (always glad to see Elizabeth Marvel). She knows better than he that this is a bad idea because regardless of the outcome it will damage Raymond in away he is not prepared to deal with. Both Molto and Della Guardia (and by the second episode its clear Molto is driving the steam roller) are determined to make this personal and Raymond clearly wants to go just at hard. Only the Judge is the voice of caution and its clear she has no patience for the sausage-fest that has already begun.

By the third episode Rusty is pinned in a way he doesn’t want to admit. He’s the center of a media circus, his wife is barely holding it together and his son and daughter no longer trust their father. Barbara is considering an affair of her own, he’s already assaulted the medical examiner and there are photos of him the night he was there. He doesn’t know yet but the audience – and fans of the novel – know that Molto has a call between the two and it shows just how obsessed he was.

If anything Presumed Innocent is the kind of novel that may not only well be evergreen but benefits from a modern take. In 1990, the idea of a media circus around a trial was not the everyday event it is now and the idea of Rusty going into hiding is now completely ludicrous. This adds to the tension of the series; Rusty has used these tools before countless times and now they are being turned on him in a way that he never thought would seem possible. The fact that we live in the era of CSI as well as cameras on phones means that Kelley and his writers don’t really have to do much to make the tension modern.

The wrinkle that might bother some – although I seriously doubt the internet is inflamed about the work of 1990s legal thrillers the same way they view comic books and sci-fi – are some of the updates to the characters. Barbra is played by Ruth Negga, a bi-racial actress instead of Bonnie Bedelia, though nothing else about her has changed. Della Guardia is now African-American and while Judge Lyttle is still African-American she is now a woman. The biggest change so far is that Sandy Stern, the attorney who took over Rusty’s defense and has been played on film by Raul Julia and TV by Hector Elizondo, is mentioned  but not present. The equivalent seems to be Mya Winslow, played by Gabby Beans. Finally the lead detective who was played by John Spencer in the original is not played by Alana Rodriguez and is a Latina.

I suspect these updates are more to bring the series in context with the modern era; in 1990 all of the key figures in Chicago were white males, with the exception of the judge who was played by Paul Winfield. What’s more important is that Kelley has not made an alteration in how they behaved in both the book and the movie: Fagbenle is just as oily as before, Rodriguez is just as angry at the betrayal of someone she considered a friend and Lyttle has no patience for the machismo on display.

The biggest change, though perhaps unsurprising when you consider Kelley’s work in the last decade, is that he makes the women as important as the men are. Barbara is allowed to have her bitterness at the fact she now feels trapped in a marriage with a man who has betrayed her over and over. Lorraine, practically a non-character in the original, is allowed to be the voice of reason not just for her husband but overall. (She also makes it very clear how big a betrayal Rusty has committed by ignoring him and sympathizes with Barbara.) And Carolyn, who was seen mostly in flashbacks and in both versions of the story more of the instigator then sympathetic, is allowed to be more than just an object of desire. Played by Renat Reinsve, we get to see a lot of her – and not just in the flesh. We learn she was keeping secrets of her own, some of which Rusty didn’t know and which he now considers a betrayal.

As you’d expect given the level of the cast, the acting is top notch. Jake Gyllenhaal is, if anything, better than Harrison Ford was in the original film. At the time Ford had rarely been giving the opportunity to stretch beyond his action hero muscles and the idea of him playing a cheating bastard and a man wrongfully accused was not something he could easily handle. (He managed to get the latter down fine by the time of The Fugitive; one can debate his ability to the do the former in What Lies Beneath.)

There’s also the not inconsiderable fact that Gyllenhaal has always been a better actor that Ford and certainly has been given the kind of roles where he can show his range more often than Ford has gotten until relatively recently. Gyllenhaal’s performance is that of a man who realizes very quickly how pinned down he is by the situation and then keeps making decisions that are understandable but nevertheless look horrible even as he makes them. He knows he's not guilty but he also knows that counts for nothing in the eyes of the law – and more importantly, the eyes of his friends and family. Kelley goes out of his way to constantly undercut our sympathy for Rusty in his position; he may not be a killer but he’s demonstrated he’s an excellent liar and regardless of how this turns out, a lot of his bridges will be burned.

The rest of the cast, as you might expect from the actors involved are superb, but in my opinion the absolute standout is Sarsgaard’s work as Molto. Sarsgaard has been one of the quietly best character actors in Hollywood for more than a quarter of a century in such films as Shattered Glass and Kinsey. (He and Gyllenhaal actually worked together in Jarhead in 2005.) In the past decade he’s been superb in many undervalued series on TV, from his work on The Killing, critically acclaimed but under-viewed series such as The Looming Tower and Wormwood before he finally received his due for his superb performance in Dopesick as the DA who exposed the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis. But his work as Tommy Molto is next level. Playing a man whose own mentor says has both ‘a persecution complex and a narcissist complex’ he is absolutely loathsome in every scene we see him in. It says something that Della Guardia constantly has to remind him: “we need to find Polhemus’s killer, not get Rusty.” It's clear every time we see him that he wants to get Rusty and if he happens to be the killer, that’s a side benefit. The last scene of the third episode, where he plays the recording of Carolyn and Rusty’s phone call is, like Tommy himself, both monstrous and pathetic at the same time. We see him strut, dance, do push-up and recite his opening argument over and over and you know this is a man who would gladly obstruct justice just to throw it in the face of a man he hates. Both the series and Gyllenhaal are favorites for award nominations; if Sarsgaard doesn’t get at least one on the leadup to the Emmys, there’s something wrong with the awards as I know them.

Anyone who has watched limited series adaptations of books over the years knows very well that the adaptor may very well take liberties with the ending. Kelley has already done that at least twice, both with the ending of The Undoing and the first season of Nine Perfect Strangers, so it won’t shock me if he chooses to do the same, even with one of the most famous ones of the 1990s. As I have only vague memories of the original novel and as someone who cares little about this to begin with, I remain confident with Kelley’s decision. This is a master’s hand and the courtroom drama has been his place of business.

It didn’t shock me that Presumed Innocent was renewed for a second season; as anyone who has read Turow’s book knows a fair amount of his novels take place in the world of the Chicago legal system and he himself has written a sequel to this book. It is unclear what form the second season will take; whether it will take place in the world of Turow or whether Kelley will visit a completely different scenario with a different cast. I find myself unbothered because I am satisfied with this one. It has taken be awhile to begin watching streaming series that will be for consideration for Emmys this year. I’m glad I presumed to start with this one. (Sorry.)

My score: 4.25 stars.