# Presumed Innocent (film)
*Presumed Innocent* is a 1990 American courtroom thriller directed by [Alan J. Pakula](https://www.edgepedia.org/alan-j-pakula), starring [Harrison Ford](https://www.edgepedia.org/harrison-ford) as Chicago prosecuting attorney Rusty Sabich, who is put on trial for the rape and murder of a colleague with whom he had an affair. It is an adaptation of [Scott Turow](https://www.edgepedia.org/scott-turow)'s 1987 debut novel of the same name, and it was produced by Sydney Pollack and Mark Rosenberg for Warner Bros. Pictures and Mirage.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 27 July 1990; R; 126 minutes (AFI) [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655) |
| Director and writers | Alan J. Pakula; screenplay by Frank Pierson and Pakula [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655) |
| Principal cast | Harrison Ford (Rusty Sabich), Greta Scacchi (Carolyn Polhemus), Raul Julia (Sandy Stern), Bonnie Bedelia (Barbara Sabich), Brian Dennehy (Raymond Horgan), Paul Winfield (Judge Larren Lyttle) [2](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/presumed-innocent-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yoda0njm) • [3](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/presumed-innocent-1990) |
| Key crew | Cinematographer Gordon Willis, editor Evan Lottman, music John Williams, production designer George Jenkins [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655) |
| Budget and early gross | Budget cited as $20 million in the 22 July 1990 New York Times; $59.6 million taken in five weeks of release [4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT) |
| Reception | 86% Tomatometer from 58 reviews and 67% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/presumed_innocent) |
| Later adaptation | Reimagined as a 2024 Apple TV+ series created by David E. Kelley, starring Jake Gyllenhaal [6](https://apnews.com/article/c0360859ec92da4c21bfc111489241ed) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Prosecuting attorney Raymond Horgan ([Brian Dennehy](https://www.edgepedia.org/brian-dennehy)) assigns his chief deputy, Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford), to investigate the rape and murder of his colleague Carolyn Polhemus ([Greta Scacchi](https://www.edgepedia.org/greta-scacchi)), not knowing that Sabich and Polhemus had a torrid affair. When evidence implicates Sabich, Horgan's political enemies demand his arrest, and Sabich's wife Barbara ([Bonnie Bedelia](https://www.edgepedia.org/bonnie-bedelia)) is devastated by the accusation. In desperation, Sabich turns to the defense attorney Sandy Stern (Raul Julia), and the trial produces revelations that stun him.[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/presumed_innocent) Paul Winfield plays Judge Larren Lyttle, a judge with hidden motives.[3](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/presumed-innocent-1990)
The film opens with an empty jury box and voice-over narration by Sabich: "I am a prosecutor. I am a part of the business of accusing, judging, and punishing." It closes with the same image and a narration in which Sabich states that "The murder of Carolyn Polhemus remains unsolved," explaining that it is a practical impossibility to try two people for the same crime and that he could not remove his son's mother, Barbara, who is revealed as Carolyn's killer.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655) • [18](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/presumed-innocent-reveals-killer-twist) Warner Bros. asked critics not to discuss the ending, and the identity of the killer was closely guarded through most of the story.[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT) • [7](https://edition.pagesuite.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=cf4e1b1e-ae0d-4790-929a-d12e357260ba)
## From novel to film
Turow's debut novel, published in 1987, was an immediate bestseller. As announced in a 19 December 1986 Publishers Weekly brief, Farrar, Straus & Giroux paid $200,000 for it, the publisher's highest advance to that date.[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT) The novel remained on the New York Times best-seller list for fifty-four weeks,[8](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/08/16/inconclusive-evidence/) won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1988, stayed on bestseller lists for forty-three weeks by another count, and sold four million paperback copies.[9](https://detective.gumer.info/txt/critical.pdf)
A bidding war for the film rights developed in early 1987 among several producers: David Brown and Richard Zanuck made the first bid of $75,000 against a total of $300,000; [Don Simpson](https://www.edgepedia.org/don-simpson) and [Jerry Bruckheimer](https://www.edgepedia.org/jerry-bruckheimer), backed by Paramount, initially offered $300,000 and dropped out when bids exceeded $750,000; [Peter Guber](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-guber) and Jon Peters and director Sydney Pollack each bid $1 million of their own money; Irwin Winkler at United Artists and MGM also competed.[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT)
Pakula said the script needed substantial work when he came on board and spent roughly a year rewriting it with Frank Pierson before production began.[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT) The two faced a difficult adaptation: the novel's dense first-person narrative, told from the perspective of an alleged murderer, was simplified and tightened, with its psychological subtleties jettisoned and the emphasis shifted to legal and forensic investigation.[10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/presumed-innocent) One visible change concerns money for the defense: instead of Barbara volunteering her trust fund as in the novel, the Sabiches mortgage their house to pay the legal fees.[11](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-09-09-ca-315-story.html) The Los Angeles Times judged it the adaptation of its summer crop made "as nearly congruent with its original novel as possible in a film."[11](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-09-09-ca-315-story.html)
The cast prepared with real-world models. Greta Scacchi spent time observing [Linda Fairstein](https://www.edgepedia.org/linda-fairstein), head of the Manhattan District Attorney's sex-crimes unit, and [Raul Julia](https://www.edgepedia.org/raul-julia) researched his role by speaking with the lawyer Michael Kennedy.[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT)
## Reception
The film was a critical and commercial success. It took in $59.6 million in five weeks of release,[4](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT) and a contemporary survey lists it among the ten top-grossing films of 1990.[9](https://detective.gumer.info/txt/critical.pdf) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 86% Tomatometer from 58 reviews and a 67% Popcornmeter from more than 10,000 ratings; the site's critics consensus credits the script, Pakula's focused direction, and Ford's performance.[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/presumed_innocent)
Roger Ebert, longtime film critic of the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-sun-times), gave the film a positive review, writing that at its core is "the fear of being found guilty of a crime one did not commit" and praising Ford's "delicate balancing act" in seeming plausible both as a killer and as an innocent man. He noted that the adaptation presents the evidence as needed without getting bogged down in the novel's forensic detail.[3](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/presumed-innocent-1990) Not all critics agreed on the pacing: Time called the book "basically a page turner" and the movie "a slow burner," regretting that the scruffy atmosphere of the novel was lost in the film's elegant shadows,[12](https://time.com/archive/6715520/cinema-slow-burner-presumed-innocent/) and a Christian Science Monitor review observed that reducing the novel to a 126-minute film stripped away many of its complexities and ambiguities.[13](https://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0730/lpre.html) Time Out found the plot still suspenseful but faulted the characterization of the victim, whose role becomes merely functional once the novel's first-person vantage point is lost.[10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/presumed-innocent)
## Censorship and versions
The [British Board of Film Classification](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-board-of-film-classification) classified the film on 28 August 1990 with a cinema running time of 126 minutes 43 seconds, noting that the content received cuts or alterations as part of the classification process. Later home-entertainment versions ran 121 minutes 37 seconds, classified in 1991 and again in 1999, with the consumer advice "Contains strong references to sexual violence."[2](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/presumed-innocent-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yoda0njm)
## Legacy and later adaptations
The film is remembered as a highlight of the era of prestige adaptations of bestselling page-turner novels, and its mixture of sex and moral seriousness became a formula for adult thrillers through the 1990s.[14](https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-presumed-innocent-movie-was-a-highlight-of-hollywoods-page-turner-era) Turow eventually wrote a sequel, *The Burden of Proof* (1990), and continued Rusty Sabich's story in a 2010 novel.[8](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/08/16/inconclusive-evidence/) • [15](https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/presumed-innocent-season-2-everything-we-know-about-the-courtroom-drama)
In 2024 Apple TV+ premiered a new *Presumed Innocent* series created by [David E. Kelley](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-e-kelley), the writer behind courtroom dramas including *Boston Legal* and *The Lincoln Lawyer*, with [Jake Gyllenhaal](https://www.edgepedia.org/jake-gyllenhaal) as Rusty Sabich and Peter Sarsgaard as prosecutor Tommy Molto. Kelley said he was not looking to improve on the book but to depict on screen what a two-hour film could not, and the series changes the story so that viewers who know the book or the 1990 film will not know what comes next.[6](https://apnews.com/article/c0360859ec92da4c21bfc111489241ed) • [16](https://jaapl.org/content/52/4/526) • [17](https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/david-e-kelley-discusses-adapting-presumed-innocent-based-on-the-iconic-crime-novel/) The series was renewed for a second season in July 2024, shaped as an anthology with a new case and cast.[15](https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/presumed-innocent-season-2-everything-we-know-about-the-courtroom-drama)
## References
1. [Presumed Innocent (1990), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58655)
2. [Presumed Innocent, British Board of Film Classification](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/presumed-innocent-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yoda0njm)
3. [Roger Ebert, "Presumed Innocent" review, Chicago Sun-Times, 27 July 1990](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/presumed-innocent-1990)
4. [Presumed Innocent, AFI Catalog (history and production notes)](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58655-PRESUMED-INNOCENT)
5. [Presumed Innocent, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/presumed_innocent)
6. [Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard in "Presumed Innocent," AP News, 2024](https://apnews.com/article/c0360859ec92da4c21bfc111489241ed)
7. ["Presumed Innocent" series review, The Denver Post](https://edition.pagesuite.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=cf4e1b1e-ae0d-4790-929a-d12e357260ba)
8. [Robert Towers, "Inconclusive Evidence," The New York Review of Books, 16 August 1990](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/08/16/inconclusive-evidence/)
9. [Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction (Turow entry)](https://detective.gumer.info/txt/critical.pdf)
10. [Presumed Innocent film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/presumed-innocent)
11. ["Back to the Source," Los Angeles Times, 9 September 1990](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-09-09-ca-315-story.html)
12. ["Cinema: Slow Burner," Time, 30 July 1990](https://time.com/archive/6715520/cinema-slow-burner-presumed-innocent/)
13. ["Streamlining 'Presumed Innocent,'" Christian Science Monitor, 30 July 1990](https://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0730/lpre.html)
14. ["The Presumed Innocent Movie Was a Highlight of Hollywood's Page-Turner Era," RogerEbert.com](https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-presumed-innocent-movie-was-a-highlight-of-hollywoods-page-turner-era)
15. ["Presumed Innocent season 2: everything we know," WhatToWatch](https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/presumed-innocent-season-2-everything-we-know-about-the-courtroom-drama)
16. ["A Forensic Analysis of Presumed Innocent," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law](https://jaapl.org/content/52/4/526)
17. [David E. Kelley discusses adapting "Presumed Innocent," Creative Screenwriting](https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/david-e-kelley-discusses-adapting-presumed-innocent-based-on-the-iconic-crime-novel/)
18. ['Presumed Innocent' Reveals an Unexpected Killer](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/presumed-innocent-reveals-killer-twist)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1990s films › Thrillers › Released 1990 to 1995*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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