How 'Presumed Innocent' Departs from the Scott Turow Novel and Harrison Ford Film

Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent was the page-turner of its time. An engrossing and explicit tale of murder, infidelity and the law that littered beaches and airports with the reader’s attention. A subsequent bidding war ensued in Hollywood for the rights, ultimately going to Sydney Pollack who produced Alan J. Pakula’s film version with Harrison Ford, released in the summer of 1990. It was a two-hour adaptation of a 400+ page book that kept most of its characterizations, plotting, twists, and even dialogue intact. When I first read the book I purposely avoided reading the final pages to allow myself the experience of the big reveal on the big screen. Now, as we live in the era where multi-part crime documentaries seem to go an episode or two past their own necessity or some life tales not going long enough (see: The Beach Boys and Jim Henson Idea Man), television lifer David E. Kelley decided to take a crack at Turow’s novel and extend its already filmed 127-minute running time into an eight-part, roughly seven-hour miniseries on Apple TV. Needless to say, the alterations from the previous incarnations are a bit of a stretch.

Part of the greatness of Harrison Ford’s performance as Rozat K. Sabich (Rusty to his friends), the lawyer ultimately accused of murdering his colleague and lover, Carolyn Polhemus, was the coldness of it. The screenplay bookended the film with the first-person narration of Sabich offering his two cents on the justice system, a device used to key effect in the book to put us inside the head of a man who may have cheekily been an unreliable narrator. Portions of that were put to good use in the film as Rusty says out loud (in a speculative way anticipating the mindset of the prosecution) things that could be interpreted as self-incrimination. Watch the moment where Bradley Whitford’s assistant lawyer (missing out on scenes with his future West Wing co-star, John Spencer) pauses after hearing Rusty comment on missing evidence. “Maybe I took it when I took the diaphragm.” In the book, it’s even more jarring with inner monologues such as, “Don’t let the fact that you killed her influence your judgment as a lawyer.”

This is completely lost in Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of Sabich. Instead of a cold, emotionless fish, Gyllenhaal is all emotion. Erupting at the tiniest of infractions in the workplace challenging his authority and frequently ignoring the advice of more rational colleagues around him, he is more like the please-make-me-angry version of his rendition of Dalton in this year’s Road House remake. Yet despite this suggesting the kind of volatile fly-off-the-handle personality that might react negatively in the heat of the moment toward his former lover, Gyllenhaal’s Sabich doesn’t talk and respond as someone who could have actually done it. This is not leftover baggage from 1987 and 1990, though, with knowledge of who the actual perpetrator was. If Kelley’s version does one thing, it certainly leads with the suggestion that the solution will be different this time. Even with a kind of knowing look in the first episode from the original killer that felt about as subtle as the side-eyed glance from George Kennedy’s sci-fi underling in Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance.

While there are plenty of suspects in play - way more than the book and movie, which focused more on the did-he-or-didn’t-he nature of the protagonist than chasing down a murderer’s row of red herrings - one who was definitely never a suspect is nearly erased entirely. And by nearly, I mean a throwaway shout-out to the law office where they find another attorney to assist. The character of Alejandro “Sandy” Stern played masterfully in the film by Raul Julia is nowhere to be seen. The movie suggests them as former adversaries (though ones of great respect), and in the book is first introduced as the defense attorney representing the mother of Wendell McGaffney (McGaffney in the movie portrayed by Joseph Mazzello three years before Jurassic Park) the little boy whose mother savagely abused him and crushed his head in a vise. Stern is never seen on the other side of the court case in the movie but when he takes over Rusty’s case, we meet one of the coolest professionals with a poker face that could bluff your royal flush with a 2-7 underneath.

Instead, in the Kelley version, Rusty’s mentor and eventual betrayer, Raymond Horgan (played by Bill Camp) takes on the case. In all versions, Horgan loses an election to maintain his role as the Prosecuting Attorney of Kindle County (a stand-in for Illinois’ Cook County - Pakula’s version filmed everywhere but) and then is resentful and suspicious toward Rusty for seemingly slow-walking the investigation into Carolyn’s murder. He ends up testifying against Rusty, though Stern cuts him down to size and is never heard from again. Here, Raymond becomes his champion, a bit against the wishes of his wife (Camp’s real-life spouse, Elizabeth Marvel), whom, in the book and film, he is divorced from and free to carry on his own dalliance with Polhemus. It’s all enough to make one’s head explode in a Scanners-like recreation. Not that the creators of the miniseries would include something like that here. Or would they?

So much of this trumped-up version is designed to re-fashion characters whose heads appear ready to detonate in any given scene. Take the character of the coroner, “Painless” Kumagai, described in the book as “a weird-looking little Japanese who seems to have come out of a forties propaganda piece.” He is also incompetent, leading to a “colossal blunder” on the stand that Rusty tells his then-lawyer, Stern, to “savor…(as) no lawyer gets many crosses like that.” Here, as played by James Hiroyuki Liao, every scene with Gyllenhaal is like watching two lions ready to bite the heads off each other, and both come off like unprofessional idiots who should have been fired yesterday.

A much cooler antagonist emerges here in the form of Tommy Molto, played with a kind of nerdy gotcha sleaze by Peter Sarsgaard. It’s arguably the most interesting version in the piece and by far the most expanded role from book to adaptation. Turow first introduces him practically as a ghost, just a name bandied about as he has gone missing from the office in the wake of Carolyn’s murder. As a close ally (and former grade school mate) to Raymond’s election opponent, Nico Della Guardia (played here in an oddly aloof performance by O-T Fagbenle that begins to take on more confidence as the plotting gets dumber around him), Molto is a detriment both ways. One less prosecutor in the office in the biggest murder case of Raymond’s tenure, but so closely connected to Nico (fired by Raymond some time ago) that he could be feeding him information or conspiring with Painless. Tommy is also alluded to potentially be a little creep.

Turow’s portrait of Molto was of a short, overweight man with no girlfriend to speak of. Rusty even refers to him as “celibate” (perhaps one of the founding incels.) He worked closely with Carolyn and is even alleged to have participated in a bribery scheme with her (a missing “B File” is nowhere to be found in 2024.) “Who knows exactly how she beguiled him,” Rusty wonders in the book? In the 1990 version, Molto is played by the great character actor Joe Grifasi as a weasley right-hand man. Sarsgaard’s version seems to be on the same crusade to nail Rusty for what could be either personal, righteous, or diversionary since you know exactly where Kelley is headed when it is suggested Carolyn complained about someone creeping on her at the office. Meant to implicate Rusty. Mystery fans know better. Which results in Molto becoming the top alternate suspect to the murder. However, when a key reveal turns the attention on him, mystery fans know better.

We have not even talked about the kids yet. The kids are not alright in the miniseries and if you needed more suspects, Kelley serves up more with each episode. In the book and film, Rusty has one child, Nat (played by a pre-King of the Hill and Bring It On, Jesse Bradford), second grade in the book, a little older in the movie and is sent away to camp as the trial begins. This time, Rusty has two teenage children, a son and a daughter. While events around the Sabich household slowly brings Jaden (Chase Infiniti) closer to her father, Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick) happens to be caught on a street camera riding his bike near the scene on the night of the murder. A bike subsequently wiped down by mom with the ferocity of Howard Hughes washing his hands.

Kelley goes the other way with Carolyn’s son from a previous marriage. This boy is never mentioned in the movie (only the previous husband in one brief scene) but in the book, Marty Polhemus is 18-20 years, in art school, and referred to as “an heir.” But never even a hint of being a suspect. Despite even a moment of panic when Rusty thinks he has been wired to catch him on something, it turns out to be nothing. “I don’t think you’re the guy that killed her,” Marty tells him. He even sends him a Christmas card after the trial. Not here. Carolyn’s estranged son, Michael Caldwell (Tate Birchmore) is a wretched little shit trying to blind text Rusty into a confession, testifying against him all while being revealed that he too was outside the window filming Rusty and Carolyn together the night of the murder.

As much as Kelley wants to stack the deck with suspects for a new audience, if anything could have been accomplished with this modern adaptation with 34-37 years of progress it would be to provide the story’s women a bit more heft and a fair shake. Sure, Paul Winfield’s fair (but also corrupt) judge Larren Lyttle is now played by Noma Dumezweni with no signs of corruption. Rusty’s detective pal from the book (identified as his “best friend”) and the film (Spencer’s Lipranzer) is substituted by Nana Mensah’s Alana Rodriguez making little impression helping him to chase down the dumbest alternate theory. Lily Rabe appears as a psychiatrist that Barbara Sabich is seeing. In the book, Rusty is seeing one who becomes a key witness and the final straw in the trial. Strangely, Rosanna Arquette shows up for one scene to basically fire Barbara and never appear again.

The miniseries is a genuine mixed bag when it comes to the two primary women at the center of Turow’s story. On the mostly favorable side, we have Ruth Negga stepping into the shoes of Barbara Sabich. In the book and film, Barbara is shown as a wife justifiably angry (“volcanically pissed”) at her husband’s affair and acceptance of handling the murder case. She is also shown as the polar opposite of Carolyn.

“And that was very exciting to me, to meet a woman who seemed to really have the lowdown, who was moving through the world at Carolyn’s speed, and who was so many different things to different people. Maybe it was the contrast to Barbara, who is so deliberately none of that.”

Barbara’s introduction in 1987 and 1990 is one of breathlessness, lying on the bed presumed to be in the comedown of exercise (as Rusty’s guess would have it), but instead is coming down from “masturbation…refuge of the lonely housewife.” Barbara is a school lifer, chasing down a Ph.D. in mathematics while Carolyn is a driven career woman. When Bonnie Bedelia’s Barbara has a momentary happy day, picking up Rusty from the ferry and taking them out to dinner, she also tries to entice him with a new negligee. “It’s very pretty,” Ford’s Rusty says before going into the other room to drink, look at Carolyn’s murder photos and have a lengthy flashback to their relationship. Barbara is saddened again.

Negga’s Barbara has several more hours to obtain screentime, which does allow some opening in the cracks of their relationship. Kelley also extends the running time by giving her a hunky bartender that schmoozes her and the opportunity to contemplate having an affair herself. Those in the know of the solution to this mystery will not see in this performance or the way it’s written that this Barbara is the guilty one. That is, unlike Bedelia’s performance (who was not nominated but whose Oscar clip could have been a spoiler that year) though it may be saddled with an unflattering cliché of a character, Negga actually enlivens it with shades and hints of her greater role in the story’s events. She is given the film’s big final monologue instead of Rusty laying out the facts himself to his detective friend.

Unflattering is an understatement when it comes to Carolyn Polhemus, though. Greta Scacchi brought to life Turow’s characterization of female ambition, callously sleeping her way up the chain of command and moving on when she feels she can glean no more from them. Corrupt but not incompetent, she was shown to be a “damn fine prosecutor” who drew less flattering terms from the rank-and-file men around her. Lipranzer says more than once that “the lady was bad news.” In one of the film’s few moments of moral clarity toward Carolyn, Rusty responds with “so that makes it OK I killed her?” “Did you?” Lipranzer asks him, and the question becomes all the more muddled in the miniseries.

Not because there is the possibility of an alternate reveal. Pakula’s film cleverly subverts readers’ expectations by having Rusty find the blood-and-hair-stained murder weapon in his toolbox and then take it down to the basement to wipe it clean. John Williams’ eerie score slowly gets louder and more finite as the camera pulls back on Ford, seemingly for a final shot. That is before the music is interrupted with someone saying, “I did it. I fooled them all.” Those words also become a momentary misdirection as the audience is knocked back and forth for a minute on who the real culprit is. But in Kelley’s version, who cares?

This sentiment stems from how Carolyn is portrayed now. Less as a cruel archetype from the post-feminist Reagan era, Renate Reinsve’s Carolyn is barely a character at all. Moreso even than the Scacchi version, she is just the corpse that puts this vehicle in motion. All we come to know about her is that she is a lawyer that Rusty sleeps with and is left hogtied and bludgeoned to death in her home. There is a momentary inclusion that she hid some evidence in a murder case, but that is presented as motivation for revenge and a potential frame-up by the incarcerated suspect (See: “dumbest alternate theory”) than anything suggesting a consistent moral corruption vs. ensuring justice. There are no genuine eulogies for her death or a lament for if she deserved better. She is just another body on the slab paying the price for someone else’s jealousy. Whomever that may be.