An Innocent Man

Plot synopsis:
Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is a respected maintenance chief with American Airlines in Los Angeles. He has a beautiful, successful wife (Laila Robins) and a nice home in the suburbs. Life is good.Meanwhile, two rogue narcotics cops take down a cocaine smuggling operation aboard a fishing boat at the Long Beach waterfront. One armed suspect is wounded during the bust. The officers' behavior during the arrest unmasks their violent and unorthodox methods. One of the cops, Mike Parnell (David Rasche), carries the confiscated cocaine from the boat, stopping to put a couple of kilos in his car trunk before turning the rest over to a supervisor who arrives to take charge of the operation.Jimmie Rainwood arrives at home that same evening, expecting an empty house and salad in the fridge. Instead, he is surprised to find his wife home early and a steak dinner waiting for him. Jimmie and Kate make plans for a last luxury vacation before they have kids.The next day, Officers Mike Parnell and Danny Scalise (Richard Young), both adrenaline junkies, stop at a phone booth to call an informant. As Parnell prepares to dial the call, he turns his back to Scalise and snorts coke from a vial he is carrying. The informant tips Parnell off to a suspected drug deal taking place that evening. Delighted, Parnell returns to the car and relays the address to his partner, but recklessly confuses "Oak Lane" for "Oak Way."Rainwood arrives at home that evening to find the empty house and cold salad he expected the night before. As Rainwood showers, Parnell and Scalise creep up to the house. After carefully peering inside, they break down the front and back doors and storm into the house while Rainwood uses the hair dryer. Rainwood hears the loud noise and steps out into the hallway, dryer in hand. Amped up by the tense situation and the cocaine, Parnell mistakes the hair dryer for a weapon and shoots Rainwood, seriously wounding him. Scalise enters from the back of the house and quickly realizes that the supposed weapon is a hair dryer. They search the premises and find no drugs. Realizing they are in the wrong house, they use a drop gun and planted drugs to frame Rainwood and cover their tracks. Kate arrives to find her husband seriously injured and falsely accused of selling narcotics and shooting at police officers.An Internal Affairs officer, John Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), is suspicious of the cops' story but has no proof with which he can challenge their version of events. The crooked narcotics officers coerce their seedy informant into falsely testifying that he had bought drugs from Rainwood on several occasions, and that Rainwater had used his airline maintenance job to smuggle the drugs into the country. Rainwood is confident that justice will prevail and therefore refuses a misdemeanor plea deal, since it would ruin his career. Shockingly, he is convicted of felony assault and drug distribution and sentenced to six years in prison.Rainwood is totally unprepared for the harsh realities of prison life. Soon after his arrival, his cellmate is shanked and burned alive in a prison yard vendetta. Rainwood decently but foolishly tries to rescue the dying man, but he is quickly tackled by lifer Virgil Cane (F. Murray Abraham) before the guards can shoot him. Rainwood tries to hang on to the morality of the outside world inside the prison walls, but he quickly realizes that won't be possible. He is quickly targeted for domination by a black prison gang and their brutal leader, Jingles (Bruce A. Young). Offered protection by an Aryan Nation gang in the prison, he declines, considering them an equally vile option. Not wanting to become a helpless pawn, "Jimmie Rain" is offered help by Virgil Cain, who was once set up by the same pair of dirty cops. Jimmie agrees to think about it, but refuses to consider solving his problem by killing anyone.Soon afterward, Rainwood is cornered by Jingles and two muscled-up members of his posse. When he refuses to give them his "outside money," he is viciously beaten, ending up in the infirmary. He refuses to identify his attackers to the warden, earning him 15 days in segregation. Back in the general population, he is once again confronted by Jingles, who taunts him about the beating. Virgil offers him advice once again, but Jimmie isn't ready yet. Then in the gym one day, Rainwood is seized by Jingles and his crew, hustled into the bathroom, and made to watch the brutal rape of an inmate who was "sold" to them. Jingles makes it clear that the same fate is in store for Jimmie, and soon.Rainwood goes to Virgil and says he is finally ready to deal with his problem. In the prison workshop, a thick piece of Plexiglass is fashioned into a shank. At Virgil's direction, some shaved soap is mixed into Jingles' eggs in the cafeteria serving line. During a subsequent basketball game, Jingles suffers severe intestinal cramps and heads for the bathroom. Rainwood follows him in. As Virgil covers the entrance, Jimmie silently approaches Jingles as he is getting up off the toilet. Jingles, seeing the shank, sneers at Rainwood and threatens to take it away and use it on him. Jingles feints at Jimmie but isn't quick enough. Rainwood buries the shank into Jingles' midsection and breaks it off. He drops the hilt into the floor drain and staggers out with the help of Virgil. The warden admits he can't prove anything but sends Jimmie into solitary confinement for 90 days.Back on the outside, the two rogue cops approach Kate in a parking lot and threaten her, advising her to keep her mouth shut and to quit agitating about her husband's case. She goes to Fitzgerald and pleads for his help. When he tells her once again that he can't do anything without proof, she lies and tells him that Parnell and Scalise used the n-word to describe him. He confronts the pair in an alley and warns them to leave her alone.Having served three years, Rainwood is paroled. Kate brings him home, and he tries to adjust to life on the outside. As he works on his classic Pontiac Firebird one day, Parnell and Scalise show up and tell him they need to have a talk. Inside the house, they threaten and intimidate him and Kate. They emphasize that as an ex-convict, they can make his life miserable. In desperation, Jimmie and Kate turn to Virgil, who concocts a plan to set up the crooked cops. They also meet with officer Fitzgerald, promising him a chance to bust Parnell and Scalise in the act of buying illicit drugs for the purpose of re-selling them.Parnell and Scalise have been busy taking down drug dealers in the area, stealing the bulk of the drugs, and selling them to a mobster named Donatelli at a discount. Rainwood and an accomplice from prison feed a bad tip to Parnell and Scalise through the informant who originally set Rainwood up. Acting on the tip, the dirty cops stage a raid and seize 25 kilos of cocaine. What they don't realize is that the drug dealers work for Donatelli. Donatelli demands the cocaine back by the following day. Parnell briefly muses to his partner about fleeing with the stolen drugs. That night, Rainwood and his accomplice, wearing ski masks, jump the surprised cops and steal the drugs. Donatelli has made it clear to Parnell and Scalise that he will kill them and their families if they don't return the cocaine. They stall Donatelli, telling him things are too hot at the moment and they will have to bring the coke back the next day. The desperate pair soon gets a phone call from the "frightened" hijackers, offering to return the drugs in exchange for a meager $20,000 in traveling money. Parnell and Scalise can't believe their good fortune. They decide to keep the drugs after the buy-back meeting and flee to Florida, $750,000 richer. The meet will take place at a marina.At the pre-arranged meet, Internal Affairs detective John Fitzgerald waits in his car and listens over a wire attached to Rainwood's accomplice, Malcolm. Malcolm approaches with part of the coke and explains that once he has the money, his partner will leave the rest of the drugs in a nearby trash barrell. But hot-headed Parnell grabs Malcolm and threatens to blow his brains out. He demands that the mystery bagman (Rainwood) step out of hiding with the remaining coke. When Rainwood reveals himself, Parnell sends Scalise to retrieve the drugs and then shoots Malcolm in the back. Detective Fitzgerald exits his car, identifies himself, and exchanges gunfire with Parnell. Scalise jumps in his car with the bag of drugs and tries to flee the scene, but Fitzgerald manages to kill him. Parnell hijacks another vehicle from a startled driver and speeds off, but Rainwood leaps into the back of the car and and grapples with him, causing a crash that throws Rainwood out, injured and stunned. Parnell continues his flight on foot. Just as he thinks he is home free, Rainwood comes out of nowhere and slams into him. A vicious and bloody hand-to-hand fight ensues, with Parnell finally pulling a knife and lunging at Rainwood. Rainwood disarms Parnell and starts to cut his throat, but he hears Kate (who has followed him) begging him to stop.In a final scene, Parnell enters the same prison that had held Rainwood. He hears someone call out to him from the cells above and looks up to see Virgil Cane grinning in derision. Jimmie Rainwood returns to his airline job.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
The movie talks an ordinary family man (Tom Selleck) who works as an airplane engineer and married a good woman (Laila Robins) .
He's only helped by a veteran convict (F.Murray Abraham) framed for prison life.It's an interesting film developed in two parts : in and out of prison .
Tom Selleck, always calm in his roles seems to take it lying down at first, but when he is constantly picked out by the usual jail hoodlums and is still haunted by the cops who framed him, he can take no more.
This movie is a great example of a character thrust into an awful situation - a situation where you question, "What would I do in his shoes?" For that reason, it is very tense and suspenseful throughout as Tom Selleck's character tries to navigate prison life.
Two crooked cops make a mistake (in more ways than one) when they go to the wrong address expecting to find a drug dealer, break into his house, mistake a hair dryer he is carrying for a gun, and shoot him.
(Abraham plays another inmate.) I liked this film even though it did follow a formula and was a typical revenge type movie.
F. Murray Abraham is excellent as Tom Sellecks Obi-wan, the one who guides him throughout the movie and helps him bust the cops that framed him.
Having spent time in prison myself may make me a bit biased in favor of a movie where a convict actually gets revenge on the cops who set him up-so be it.
I can remember only one other movie as good as this that came close to showing the reality of prison life and that was 'Short Eyes' a movie filmed in the Tombs in Manhattan-a place where I was a guest more than once.
Murray Abraham in this flick as the tough old con that give Selleck advice on how to survive in prison.
I think An Innocent Man proved that whenever he decided to end his Magnum PI series, Tom Selleck was going to have no trouble in getting good parts.
And not those that were a variation on his Thomas Magnum persona.This is one really powerful film about An Innocent Man getting caught in the criminal justice machinery because of a pair of dirty cops, David Rasche and Richard Young.
Selleck does things that were against his old nature.When he does get paroled from inside the joint Abraham quarterbacks a revenge scheme that Selleck participates in.Besides those mentioned I should also single out Laila Robins who plays Selleck's wife who stands by him and Bruce Young who plays a violent convict that Selleck has to deal with in the joint.An Innocent Man is one of the best made for television films done and should have gotten big screen theatrical release..
An underrated prison movie-Selleck and Abraham are great..
Selleck is very good and Abraham as the hardened con is excellent.The worst premise: how do you prove you are innocent ...Dirty cops high on coke made a fatal error and enter the wrong home.
Prison life is hell.What does a man of integrity and character do in prison, unjustly accused??!!His wife is obsessed with proving his innocence.So compelling ...
James Rainwood (Tom Selleck) is a real stand up guy, with a loving wife and in a dream job with a company that just couldn't cope without him.
Earlier in 1989 we had seen the release of Sly Stallone vehicle Lock Up, a film, that for all its many faults, was a dream come true to the action movie fan who also has a bent for any piece involving incarceration.
So up steps Tom Selleck, who after recently showing himself to be a more than effective light entertainer in films such as Three Men and a Baby and Her Alibi, is looking to break out into other, more rounded genres (he also made the quite excellent Quigley Down Under in 1989).
Anybody who can make a bad guy like-able by being so over the top corrupt, you know there's something special going on.Bruce Young as Jingles was another all-time classic character, another charismatic villain with a sparkle of gleam in his eyes.
F. Murray Abraham was fantastic, as he delivers one of the best ending lines to a movie of all-time.Honestly everybody who participated in An Innocent Man was on their A game, I can mention every single character here.
A law abiding airplane mechanic is caught in a drug sting by a couple of dishonest cops and finds out that even being innocent isn't good enough to keep him out of trouble.Tom Selleck, F.
I was hooked on a "memorable quote" in the movie during the prison stay where Tom Selleck's inmate friend told him during mealtime that "you don't have to speak up in here, but you have to stand up!"  Gave me a personal motto that stayed with me.I liked the story.
While An Innocent Man, and Tom Selleck, both, do an admirable job in exposing how this can happen to any one of us and what we would have to do to survive, I detracted one star because it depicts a scenario only about 1/3 as horrible as real life in state prison: In real life, Jimmie Rainwood would have had multiple, simultaneous enemies, not just one.
Great Tom Selleck Movie.
Good movie with Tom Selleck as the lead.
I think that this was one of Tom Selleck's best movie roles.
Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer.
Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer.This is a very unconventional action film, with a good guy turned into a threat.
This is a very good "B" movie, and I enjoyed just about all of it -- the affectionate scenes between Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) and his wife, the scenes with the two corrupt cops, the scenes with Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), the scene at the beginning with Rainwood assuring his boss that the jet airliner his people are working on will be fixed on time, and even the scenes in prison, especially those with Virgil Cane (F.
:-)This is the kind of movie to rent if you're in the mood to watch a good and truly innocent man get knocked around by nasty people you'll seriously love to hate (crooked cops AND prison gang members), watch the guy suffer a bit, and then watch him get back on his feet and get his revenge on his tormentors (without losing his humanity).
Tom Selleck Is An Innocent Man- Mainly because it's not all his fault this movie is terrible.
Tom Selleck Is An Innocent Man- Mainly because it's not all his fault this movie is terrible.
Ordinary Joe Tom Selleck is in the right house at the wrong time when two scummy cops invade his home to arrest him for drugs; Selleck is clean, the cops made a mistake, so they rectify their gaffe by planting the goods on him.
Tom Selleck unwisely tries his hand at the action genre in this perfectly awful tale about a man named Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) who is sent to the slammer on a phony rap of drug dealing, in jail he meets a man named Vrigil Cane (F.Murray Abraham in the film's one and only bright spot.) who shows him the ropes and helps him avenge the bad deed that landed him to jail.
The film opens with sequences conceived to present Selleck as a loving husband and a devoted airlines maintenance supervisor His name is Jimmie Rainwood One night, a couple of crooked narcotics cops break down Rainwood's peaceful door...Jimmywho had just taken a showercomes out with a hair dryer in his hand He is shot twice by the anti-drugs cops who have caught a shadow of what looks like a gun So to justify their error, they concocted an entire fairy tale planting drugs in Jimmy's home and a gun in his handRainwood ends up in jailLuckily, he is befriended by Virgil Cane, played by F.
Murray Abraham Cane was the character to keep your eye on He is a 'schemer and a charmer.' Virgil disagrees with Jimmy's sensitiveness as a straight man This is an 'insane place with insane rules' that tests the human consciousness, yet survival will never be the same without some sort of sacrifice A group of degenerate prisoners make life unbearable for Jimmy until he learns how to really fight backThe film had its fair share of bloody moments and did not shy away from the nasty things that go on in men's prisons.
With the former all you have to do is put an ordinary joe in a prison , surround him with a bunch of black men and have a guard say "Time for a shower you scum " and you'll have the audience biting their finger nails.***** SPOILERS ***** Tom Selleck plays the everyman character of Jimmie Rainwood fairly well in this film and you really can empathise with him as he gets mugged by the home boys on his way back from the canteen , and the following scene made me aware of something I hadn't known at the time - American prisons are factionalised along ethnic lines .
I know this now after reading up on it and watching documentaries on the American penal system which did slightly spoil the credibility of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for me .In no way should THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and AN INNOCENT MAN be compared of course , but this film is very entertaining and sometimes chilling as the prison clichés come one after the other .
The white prisoners despise Jimmie for supposedly showing the white race to be weak while the black prisoners show what's in store for him by letting Jimmie witness a gang rape in the gym , and if you look like Tom Selleck you've got to worry about being popular in prison for all the wrong reasons .
My main criticism about AN INNOCENT MAN is the rather weak ending where it's revealed that the cops who fitted up Jimmie are corrupt which lets the screen writers - just like Jimmie - get out of jail .All in all a good prison drama .
This little under rated gem is a great flick.Witness the transformation of Tom Selleck from all round nice guy to bad ass dude as his life is turned upside down by two corrupt cops who make a mistake on a bust.
I never cared for Tom Selleck until this movie.Tom plays a nice guy who gets framed by none other than the dirty police.Rainwood (Tom Selleck) gets convicted and sent to jail.Rainwood has to learn what it takes to survive in jail.He even kills a man.After being released from jail he still was hounded  by the same cops that framed him.Finally he (Rainwood) gets even with the dirty COPS that framed him and they land behind BARS.I loved it.It was REALISTIC..
Of course, Selleck comes out the better man, toughened by prison life and seeks his revenge on the 'bad' cops.
This movie was fantastic and Tom Selleck was real good, I think this is one of his best performances ever.
So my recommendation is a must see, especially if you enjoy revenge movies and like Tom Selleck!!
But that's okay, because I was watching it on a TV set.Tom Selleck plays Jimmie Rainwood, and aircraft engineer living in the seaside 'burbs with his wife, Kate (Laila Robins), who suffers the old 'wrong place at the wrong time' thing when two highly decorated (and highly corrupt) cops, acting on a tip, hit his house, which is on Oak Lane, mistaking it for Oak WAY, where the real drug deal is going down.Jimmie's just taken a shower while he contemplates the salad Kate left for him in the refrigerator (she's working late) when the two narcs burst in.
Mistaking Jimmie's hairdryer for a gun, coke-addled detective Mike Parnell (David Rasche) shoots Jimmie.Not wanting to tarnish their "distinguished" careers, the two cops frame Jimmie and the legal system fails him and he winds up sentenced to 6 years.While Jimmie learns how to survive in the big house from lifer Virgil (F Murray Abraham), his wife writes letters, harrasses people etc to try and get him out, including clever manipulation of Internal Affairs Detective Fitzgerald (Badja Djola), and the corrupt narcs do their best to keep Jimmie and Kate silent about their collossal screw-up.A pretty formulaic prison-drama revenge-story, An Innocent Man has strength in it's performances and in it's realistic depiction of prison-life, particularly the tendency for some more experienced inmates to take pity on the "new guy" and give him some pointers so he stands at least some chance of surviving beyond his first week.
It's a revenge flick, a Tom Selleck action movie (you gotta love that he simply adds some 'handlebars' to that ridiculous moustache for his tough-guy jail-look) and a bite of after-dinner entertainment that delivers.
Todd Graff deserves a mention as the hapless Robby, a repeat offender who offers Jimmie some initial tips when they first arrive, though he gets doused in petrol and set alight about 10 minutes in...he's really good though, playing the loser who knows what every prison on the eastern seaboard looks like.F Murray Abraham is worth the price of admission alone.
A fun 'wronged man' prison movie with an improbable climax.
This watchable "wrong man" drama is probably the highlight of Tom Selleck's less than impressive movie career.
He gets railroaded at the beginning of the movie, earns the respect of his fellow prisoners by not taking being a pushover, and gets even with the dirty cops who framed him to start with.
Here is a good old-fashioned story about a man accused of murder, all because two cops (actually, one of the two cops) don't want to admit their mistake of picking the wrong house.
Tom Selleck is ideal to play the innocent man.
It's not as dark in tone like most prison movies, however.*** out of ****.
Right up there with Shawshank Redemption.One of the more underrated prison movies there are.I highly recommend watching this.the unwritten rules between convicts.Great movie and awesome case.Definitely a good prison flick I recommend this to anybodyA wrongfully accused man set up by crooked police, learns the difference between the real world and prison world.
Tom Seleck did a pretty good job playing the straight man Jimmy Rainwood who was an honest married man with a career of working maintenance on commercial aircrafts, who was then unfairly railroaded by two dirty cops (Officer Parnell and Danny) who framed him for being a drug dealer who shot at them when invading his house.
The movie never made clear what he actually did to get even with them.The other characters along the way were pretty standard for this type of story, there was Detective Fitzgerald who had already suspected Parnell and Danny of foul play but couldn't do anything about it without solid proof.
He is sent to the big house for 6 years, but gets out after 3 for good behavior, which I was curious about because Rainwood was suspected of murdering another convict in there, gangster Jingles.
Then there was Robbie, the first guy Rainwood met in prison, who acted like he knew everything but then met a horrible death by being lit on fire for, as F Murray told Rainwood, he ripped some guys off for something, but he didn't make it clear what.Parnell and Danny were the reason Rainwood's entire ordeal happened, from the minute they framed him to after he got out on parole, when they visit him right after he gets out.
Remember that, and it 'might' keep you from going back to prison.".It was a pretty good, interesting movie overall.
And I liked Rainwood's wife Layla Robbins who stuck by him throughout the whole ordeal, crusading to try to get him out of prison, her getting harassed by Parnell and Danny for it, and then her helping Rainwood when he got out to fight for justice (with Fitzgerald's help too) for everything those dirty cops had done to him..
Pure revenge film all the way is this drama from the pen of Larry Brothers which tried to be a serious movie about the prevailing of justice when "An Innocent Man" (Tom Selleck) is framed by a pair of corrupt narcotics detectives.Peter Yates never stood a chance of making this a film with a message due to its obvious direction, conclusion and its total lack of life's ever present ambiguities.
Tom Selleck's character is just too pure and righteous, and his loving wife is far too good for words, while the bad guys are just so, so bad it's annoying.
If anything, An Innocent Man has about it the air of a competent but totally uninspired made-for-TV prison drama (in actual fact, this is not a TV-movie but a major big-screen release, complete with relatively big stars).
It is not a bad film, merely one that never rises above mediocrity at any point.Airline mechanic Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) leads a normal life.
It wasn't until this film that I became aware of Selleck's arch-conservative, right-wing politics, and how his politics seem to influence some of his motion-picture roles.Here' Selleck plays an innocent white man [Jimmie Rainwood] being thrown into a prison with, and antagonized by guilty black men.
I didn't know the name of the movie, but I remembered that the corrupt police officers mistook a blow dryer for a gun (I believe...) and I remembered that his prison mate was bald (I think...) and the leading character had a mustache (now this I knew for sure!) And since I only know 2 major actors with mustaches (and apparently it wasn't Burt Reynolds, I checked) it had to be Tom Selleck, and it was!!!