Presumed Innocent Series Review: Jake Gyllenhaal the Dark Protagonist of the Splendid Apple TV+ Series

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, Bill Camp, OT Fagbenle and Peter Sarsgaard

Created By: David E. Kelley

Streaming Platform: Apple TV+

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)

Presumed Innocent was supposed to be the decisive proposal this year for Apple TV+, which is trying in every way to earn the attention and trust of the mainstream public, insisting on the caliber of the performers, and variety but above all the quality of the offering. It must be noted, however, that the series, based on the novel by Scott Turow and already brought to the big screen in 1990 in favor of a charismatic Harrison Ford, is a complete disappointment, due to an excessive rewriting of the original material, a lack of internal coherence and an atmosphere that in the long run becomes as repetitive as it is oppressive. The streaming catalogs are constantly enriched with new products, whether they are TV series or original films. The quality is obviously not always the same, there are better works and others undoubtedly less successful: among all the platforms, however, there is one that manages, even by producing much less than the others, to always maintain a very high level of quality both of its series and feature films.

We are talking about Apple TV+, which has among its Originals Severance, Servant, Pachinko, and many other titles that have been particularly appreciated by the public and critics. This month, yet another serial gem arrives in the catalog, Presumed Innocent, produced by JJ Abrams and starring – together with prominent names such as Ruth Negga, Bill Camp, and Peter Sarsgaard – Jake Gyllenhaal. The story is based on the first novel by Scott Turow and has already been adapted for the big screen by Alan J. Pakula, in the film starring Harrison Ford and Brian Dennehy. Although the first transposition was particularly appreciated at the time, with the vision of the “new” Presumed Innocent one soon realizes that the type of more expanded narrative allowed by a series is decidedly more congenial to a story like this. The series directed by Greg Yaitanes and Anne Sewitsky is – excluding the central episodes in which the pace is a little slower at times – genuinely engaging and drags the viewer into an extremely particular and complex case. The charm of this story lies in its multifaceted characters linked by twisted and complicated relationships. Finding a solution is not at all simple, and even when the truth comes to light it is difficult to distinguish the good from the bad, who is guilty from who is innocent.

Presumed Innocent Series Review: The Story Plot

When Presumed Innocent was released, it immediately became a great best seller, it seemed tailor-made to become a successful film, which promptly happened, thanks to a great director like Alan J. Pakula, to a producer like Sydney Pollack, with a screenplay that he reworked and improved upon the original material. All to the greater glory of an extraordinary cast led in a commendable way by Harrison Ford who gave us one of her best interpretations, together with a Greta Scacchi capable of renewing the concept of the femme fatale, Brian Dennehy and a great Raul Julia. In this 2024, a legal drama and crime expert like David E. Kelley takes us into the life of Rusty (Jake Gyllenhaal), a prosecutor who receives the news from his boss, District Attorney Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp) that his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve) was found murdered. We are in the midst of the elections and Horgan asks Rusty to find the culprit, confident that he can oust his former protégé and now rival Nico Della Guardia (OT Fagbenle) and his new right-hand man Tommy Very (Peter Sarsgaard), also a once part of Horgan’s team.

Horgan does not know, however, that Rusty, married for years to Barbara (Ruth Negga) and father of two children, in the past had an affair with Carolyn, of which only he and his wife know, and which almost ended their marriage. However, the investigations are stumbling in the dark, as Rusty is torn apart by feelings of guilt and fear. But when Della Guardia wins the elections (riding the media wave of the unsolved crime) as soon as he becomes the new Prosecutor, he accuses Rusty of the murder. For the protagonist, far from free from ambiguity and secrets, a painful but inevitable marathon will begin to prove his innocence, which will force him to look back at that clandestine love story, at his marriage, to try to understand how and why ended up in the dock. There would be plenty of material in Presumed Innocent to create a great thriller series, the main problem however, is that the final result here is faithful where it is not needed to the novel, totally out of line often in terms of purpose, coherence, themes, and characters. In the end, the whole can only slide into yet another operation which, rather than a rereading, is a real rewriting that is particularly presumptuous and devoid of elegance.

Presumed Innocent Series Review and Analysis

From a chronological point of view, the narrative is rather linear, the story opens on the day of Carolyn’s murder and continues through all the investigations and throughout Rusty’s trial. To enrich the story, however, a continuous series of flashbacks in the form of the protagonist’s memories and dreams, aimed at showing us first of all the character of Carolyn and then what happened before she died. In this way the narrative development becomes more complex and multifaceted than ever, reflecting the situation experienced by the protagonists and above all their interiority. As we said initially, the charm of this story lies entirely in the incredible construction of the characters and the truly complicated relationships that bind them (first and foremost the marriage between Rusty and Barbara). A story of this type only works best if it can rest on the shoulders of an excellent cast, capable of convincingly bringing the turmoil of their characters to life. The ones who obviously stand out, in this case, are Jake Gyllenhaal, who creates such a dual and tormented protagonist as few have ever seen on the screen, Ruth Negga in the role of his wife Barbara, the slimy prosecutor Tommy Tanto by Peter Sarsgaard and Raymond Horgan by Bill Camp.

They are all ambiguous characters, who cannot be pigeonholed into defined categories of “good” or “bad”, and for this reason following their stories becomes even more engaging. The character of Carolyn, although not present for obvious reasons, is nevertheless central, and is shown continuously. The story, however, is no longer focused on the investigation to find out who killed her (indeed it seems that at a certain point, no one particularly cares about this) but on how Rusty can prove that he is not guilty, or at least there isn’t enough evidence to frame him. In a series that begins as one of the most classic thrillers – a bloody ritualistic murder of a woman and the ensuing investigations – the narrative takes a decisive turn, placing the victim and what happened to her in the background. However, this does not make the story any less interesting, on the contrary, it seems capable of dragging the viewer even further into its web of truths and lies, of different perspectives, of guilty people who are innocent and vice versa.

Presumed Innocent would have an excellent cast on its side, the problem is what he is asked to do. It can also be said that he is not necessarily forced to look at the 1990 film, but if nothing else he could have had a little more cunning, instead of going elsewhere. Jake Gyllenhaal may be good, but he gives us yet another guy in a nervous breakdown that he has played for almost his entire career, disarmed by a production that makes miscasting a watchword. Renate Reinsve is absolutely out of the question, the comparison with Scacchi is honestly cruel, also due to the production’s intention to no longer make her a Machiavellian, evil, manipulative, and opportunistic female character (let alone that a woman today could be that) but something much less present and defined, negative yes but in an indirect way. Several other characters have changed gender and process, often in a very forced and senseless way, except to straighten their hair in the name of the usual woke, inclusive, and “modern” culture.

But in doing so, narrative coherence goes to waste, while we get lost in father-son conflicts which in the novel and the 1990 film no longer had much space, compared to the search for the truth, to an enigma which when solved, in the face of to the viewer, the energy is long gone, and with it the suspense. Harrison Ford in Pakula’s film gave us a character who was so self-confident, virile, and sensual, yet in reality very fragile, an extraordinary deconstruction of the myth of the alpha male, still today incredible for its complexity and impact. Here, however, everything is connected to a grayness devoid of ideas, of real accelerations, capable only of enveloping the entire cast in a moralistic grayness that makes everyone equal, everyone superimposable. The main theme of the novel, about the absence of true justice, the questioning of the cornerstones of society and the American justice system, is put aside to talk to us about emotional and family dramas, to make us hate Sarsgaard. Presumed Innocent will perhaps appeal to the general public, but such ambition corresponds to an honestly obvious superficiality in the writing and direction of the actors.

This is a product below the expectations that Apple TV+ has accustomed us to, given the potential, of everything that could be created from such an interesting novel and story that is still relevant today. The series could have talked to us much better about sexism, power, politics, existential crisis, power of image, and justice. In the end, however, Presumed Innocent is a missed opportunity, a perfect demonstration of what happens when you are obsessed with modernizing everything, even where it is not needed, out of pure moralism and vanity. It’s not only Jake Gyllenhaal who steals the show in Presumed Innocent but the rest of the performers also do their part: Barbara is sweet and fierce, while her certainties are turned upside down; there is the couple of friends who choose to take the accused’s side but at the same time watch him with caution (a great Bill Camp and an always excellent Elizabeth Marvel); the couple from the prosecutor’s office, made up of Tommy Very (a transformative Peter Sarsgaard after he had been a killer in The Killing ) and the arrogant and passive-aggressive Nico Della Guardia (OT Fagbenle, perhaps the most surprising of the cast in terms of tone and in the way they do things), who instead need a culprit at all costs.

Without forgetting the conflicted family therapist, Liz Rush (Lily Rabe who also went to the other side of the fence after Asylum) or the zealous detective Rigo (Nana Mensah). With this story, Kelley, therefore, wants to remind us above all how closely the judicial aspect is closely linked to the institutional one, and how much the interests of politics, which are still represented by human beings, coincide with those of justice. Which of the two will prevail in this story? The one created by David E. Kelley is a miniseries that immediately puts itself to the test with its work of demolition of the imagery it shows to the viewer. It does so by starting with its protagonist, who goes from a splendid family man and classic American film protagonist, defender of the law, to a disappointingly standard man tending towards the darkly ambiguous. A task entrusted to Jake Gyllenhaal (Road House), who isn’t exactly up to the task, giving few nuances to his character despite finding himself within a story that alone would be enough to bring them. Maybe Ben Affleck was needed.

What is interesting about the miniseries, in a context already seen and sometimes overused in this type of American legal drama (i.e. the one that by revealing the past changes the present), is this black wave that spreads from the protagonist and affects everyone, to remove every possible point of reference from the viewer and then be able to build a story without having otherwise caging limits. The only ones that remain are those that require current times, which rightly cannot accommodate the simplifications of the book, especially about the character of Barbara, brought (she is) very well on stage by Ruth Negga (Loving). Presumed Innocent, with his usual solid, tuned writing which above all always goes in a precise direction, has the ambition to explore the darkest and deepest rooms of human morality, digging into what lies between desires, fears, anxieties, and pains of all of us—a metaphor for those in our society. Essentially, he tells us that no one is a victim or perpetrator, no one is truly free from guilt, and that “reality” and “lie” are two words whose meaning becomes smaller the closer you get to looking at them. The only thing that can be done is to assume, given that nothing can be definitively affirmed either in one sense or the other.

Presumed Innocent Series Review: The Last Words

The new Apple TV+ series combines an excellent screenplay with the perfect acting performances of its protagonists. Perfect for lovers of thrillers and the procedural genre, Presumed Innocent is yet another serial pearl in the platform’s catalog. Presumed Innocent, an original Apple miniseries created by David E. Kelley is the new adaptation of the novel of the same name by Scott Turow, with an exceptional cast led by Jack Gyllenhaal, alongside Ruth Negga, Peter Sarsgaard, Bill Camp, OT Fagbenle and Renate Reinsve. A legal drama with classic mechanisms that wants to use the genre to deconstruct everything that is thought of as universal (truth, lie, guilty, innocent) to investigate the grays that are those of the human soul and those of the society in which we live. Traditional, but compelling, above all thanks to the writing and performance of some of the less popular performers in the cast.

Presumed Innocent Series Review: Jake Gyllenhaal the Dark Protagonist of the Splendid Apple TV+ Series - Filmyhype

Director: David E. Kelley

Date Created: 2024-06-12 13:46

Editor's Rating:
3.5

Pros

• The script is excellently developed
• The multifaceted characters, especially the protagonist
• The excellent acting performances of the cast
• The narrative structure full of flashbacks
• The underlying ambiguity of the protagonist.
• The moral and ethical dilemmas that the miniseries puts on the scales.
• The crime that develops gradually, full of twists and turns.
• A great cast…

Cons

• The central episodes are perhaps a little too slow
• ...which however suffers from overacting.
• Direction and editing are valid but perhaps a little too psychedelic and syncopated.