Make Hollywood Horny Again
A week-long celebration of erotic thrillers.
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You dont quite know what to make of Harrison Fords character in the 1990 legal thrillerPresumed Innocent.
Ford plays Rozat Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor who investigates a murder hes eventually accused of committing.
Sabichs boss, district attorney Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy), is mired in a close reelection campaign.
Carolyns relationships are important to the story as bread crumbs or red herrings, depending.
We just dont know.
Presumed Innocenthas a tangled but fascinating cinema lineage, composed of strands from different variants of the thriller.
Carolyn and Rustys affair and its messy aftermath are explored in lengthy but judiciously edited flashbacks.
And theres a fascinating inversion of the film-noir trope of the femme fatale.
Shes not afemme fatale but amaudite femme: a damned woman.
Rusty says or does potentially meaningful things partially or fully in shadow.
The overall effect is of watching an actor turn it on and turn it off.
Lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs, witnesses, and judges are performers, too.
If the acting is strong enough, well never know the difference.
