In one of the best efficiency of Jake Gyllenhaal’s profession, the erstwhile Mysterio performs a person whose obsession with fixing a thriller regularly consumes his total life. As real-life political cartoonist Robert Graysmith in David Fincher’s Zodiac, Gyllenhaal goes from a disarming dork to a nervy, alienating newbie detective over the course of 150-odd minutes. In Apple TV+’s new adaptation of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent (beforehand tailored right into a Harrison Ford film in 1990), Gyllenhaal makes that shift so quick that it occurs within the second or third scene.
Gyllenhaal stars as Rusty Sabich, a profitable Chicago prosecutor in who’s launched describing the idea of “harmless till confirmed responsible” to a trial jury – successfully laying out all the thesis of Presumed Innocent and giving us an introduction to how the regulation is meant to work on the identical time. Almost instantly after that, Rusty will get a name {that a} lady he works with has been discovered murdered, and given his issue getting the phrases out when he tells his spouse (whose measured response additionally says rather a lot) and his panicked arrival on the sufferer’s dwelling, it’s abundantly clear that this wasn’t only a lady from the workplace.
From there, a sequence of lies that Rusty has been constructing begins to unravel, but it surely’s much less like a knot that must be untangled and extra like a neatly rolled-up string that simply works itself out with the slightest tug. He’s purported to be a great prosecutor, however he’s apparently not significantly good at dishonest on his spouse. And as Rusty turns into more and more manic making an attempt to persuade everybody round him that he didn’t commit the crime – whilst all of the (circumstantial) proof says in any other case – it turns into tougher and tougher to place up together with his unnecessary mendacity. If he actually didn’t do it, then why not simply come clear about every part? And if he did do it, why are we watching a present a couple of man who’s so adamant about not doing it?
The reply is that there’s one thing extra savvy occurring right here, as Presumed Innocent weaponizes Gyllenhaal’s penchant for being unlikeable – as seen all through his profession, whether or not he’s blowing it with Chloë Sevigny in Zodiac, orchestrating violent automobile crash footage in Nightcrawler, or (allegedly) not giving Taylor Swift her scarf again or no matter in “All Too Well.” He is aware of easy methods to crank up the off-putting vibes that made him a cool child in Donnie Darko to grow to be ajust plain off-putting grown-up, and that’s precisely what he’s doing in Presumed Innocent.
Every time Rusty betrays the belief of one in every of his few buddies (or his spouse, performed with a crucially regular hand by Ruth Negga) or makes a bone-headed choice that may make him look extraordinarily responsible to anybody watching, you type of need him to take the autumn and get put away ceaselessly so everybody can simply dwell their lives in peace. But then he has an emotional second together with his household or a realistically depicted panic assault or a second of realization when it hits him that the folks he helped put away have been handled simply as roughly as he’s now, and also you do not forget that he didn’t do it and he ought to be presumed harmless.
Therein lies the quietly intelligent secret to Gyllenhaal’s function in all this, calling again to the very first scene. This is a present that challenges us at nearly each flip (particularly early on) to recollect the supposed underpinnings of the American justice system. Rusty Sabich appears responsible as hell within the first episode, and he simply appears increasingly responsible as Presumed Innocent goes on (even when alternate suspects start to take form).
It’s a compelling gimmick, to the extent that “an actor’s vibes” will be thought of a gimmick, but it surely doesn’t at all times work within the present’s favor. At the danger of referring again to Zodiac for a 3rd time, that’s one film the place Gyllenhaal performs one of a number of central characters. This is an entire season of tv that’s nearly completely centered on him, so having to tolerate a man who strains tolerability for therefore lengthy will get tiring. Then there’s the matter of Peter Sarsgaard’s Tommy Molto, a rival prosecutor who’s so outwardly villainous that it’s a shock he’s not the homicide sufferer. If Presumed Innocent wished to tug a trick by making its protagonist laborious to root for, then it shouldn’t have made its antagonist even much less interesting. It needlessly muddies an in any other case fascinating commentary on our justice system and our well-known Hollywood actors.
