Presumed Innocent plays the audience for chumps in order to spring its closing-reel Big Whammy.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 12, 2022

Where Presumed Innocent really takes off, though, and begins to catch an authentic flavour of the book is in the courtroom performances.

| Jan 11, 2020

The movie is plump with twists, turns and blind alleys. Who can be trusted? Who is innocent? Who is guilty?

| Jun 12, 2018

Pakula's strong suit has always been his work with actors, and he's got a lot of good ones at his disposal. Ford gives a smart, self-effacing performance.

| Feb 6, 2018

It presents a more intriguing and certainly more complicated portrait of cinema's historic struggle with representations of female agency and sexuality.

| Jul 30, 2015

Conscientiously as this movie has been made, it does not work as well as the novel did or as some of Pakula's other films have.

| Jul 31, 2013

Pakula and the cast are excellent in the cut and thrust debates and the grilling of witnesses. At least on the surface, Presumed Innocent unfolds in the grand tradition of great courtroom drama. But nothing in Presumed Innocent is what it seems.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2013

Presumed Innocent is a stylish, dark-toned movie with handsome photography (by Gordon Willis) and solid performances.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2013

A ponderous adaptation of Scott Turow's cunningly plotted mystery novel.

| Jul 31, 2013

Intelligent, complex and enthralling.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 31, 2013

A well-rigged whodunit.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2013

A top-notch courtroom drama that will keep you guessing if you haven't read the book; even if you have, it is still a very well crafted story.

| Jul 31, 2013

A riveting adaptation of Scott Turow`s novel about a prosecutor prosecuted for murder.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 31, 2013

This deliberately paced, almost monochromatic movie reserves its real energy and color for blaming the victim.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 31, 2013

Director Alan J. Pakula, who cowrote the script with Frank Pierson, has done a reasonable job of compressing Turow's plot into a two-hour space. But the narrative skeleton is all that's left.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2011

Honed to a riveting intensity by director Alan Pakula and featuring the tightest script imaginable, Presumed Innocent is a demanding, disturbing javelin of a courtroom murder mystery.

| Mar 26, 2009

In a welcome return to suspense, Pakula effectively conveys the claustrophobia of domesticity and courtroom procedure.

| Jun 24, 2006

Mr. Ford, who comes alive in the flashbacks recalling his tempestuous affair with Carolyn, spends much of the film with a wary, cautious expression masking all other emotions. He does this with flawless delicacy...

Full Review | May 20, 2003

Ford -- breaking again from his Indiana Jones heroics -- is astonishingly fine in a performance of controlled intensity.

| May 12, 2001

A solid whodunit.

| Jan 1, 2000