When "Lock Up" was released a couple of months ago I suggested it was Sylvester Stallone's prison picture, the film in that genre that all action movie stars seem to do somewhere in the course of their career.
Now comes Tom Selleck's prison picture, "An Innocent Man," and as you might gather from the title he plays a man who is no criminal but who is imprisoned anyway.
Selleck is an everyday working stiff who lives with his wife in the hills overlooking Long Beach Harbor. One day two on-the-take narcs (David Rasche, Richard Young) burst into his home expecting to break in on a drug buy. One cop accidentally shoots Selleck and they belatedly realize they've gone to the wrong address. So they plant cocaine on Selleck and frame him, just to cover themselves.
Expecting leniency for a first offense, Selleck instead goes to prison for a six-year sentence. He decides to play it cool, serve his time and just return home to his wife. But in prison the rules change and soon he's changing also.
Meanwhile, Selleck's wife (Laila Robins) is working with another cop (Badja Djola) to try to free her husband. And the two bad cops are terrorizing her.
If that's not preposterous enough for you, there are lots of other little subplots along the way to strain your suspension of disbelief. And they might have been acceptable if the film had any kind of style or action going for it. But most of the way it's plodding and so laid-back that these prisoners seem more like they're doing summer camp than hard time.
Selleck tries hard, and he's a very appealing leading man, but "An Innocent Man" is written by-the-numbers style by first-timer Larry Brothers, as if it were a failed TV pilot, and Yates, whose work has been quite spotty from film to film, doesn't bring any life to the project.
In fact, David Rasche, TV's former "Sledge Hammer," steals the show as the wacko half of the narc duo, the film's most despicable character. ("Amadeus" Oscar-winner F. Murray Abrahams also does a walk-through as Selleck's prison buddy.)
Alternative suggestion (unless you're just a die-hard Selleck fan): Go rent Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man," with Henry Fonda as an innocent guy sent to prison — a true story.
"An Innocent Man" is rated R for violence, profanity, nudity and sex.
-PETER YATES, director of "An Innocent Man," has been around the block a few times. His movies range from the highly revered ("Bullitt," "The Dresser," "Breaking Away") to the underrated ("Eleni," "Eyewitness") to the downright awful ("The Deep," "Suspect").
"An Innocent Man" falls somewhere in between, but then you never know quite what to expect from Yates, a Briton who enjoys working in America.
"I've been very lucky I think, working with some of these big stars before they were quite so big," Yates said by telephone from New York. "They're cheaper before they become big stars."
He's referring to the likes of Dus-tin Hoffman ("John and Mary"), Barbra Streisand ("For Pete's Sake"), Steve McQueen ("Bullitt"), Peter O'Toole ("Murphy's War"), Robert Redford ("The Hot Rock"), Robert Mitchum ("Mother, Jugs and Speed"), Nick Nolte ("The Deep"), William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver ("Eyewitness"), John Malkovich ("Eleni") and Cher and Dennis Quaid ("Suspect").
"I worked with Streisand when she was sort of between boyfriends or something, so that worked out, and all those stories about Dustin. . . . He was no problem. Of course, `John and Mary' was a long time ago.
"I think Tom (Selleck) is a real film star. He looks like a film star. The only thing he doesn't do is behave like a film star. He really is the nice guy you've heard about.
"I think he is just going to expand and get bigger. And I'm glad we're getting back into an era of movie movies, movies that need film stars like Tom. A lot of the other people are wonderful, some of them are pure actors, but Tom looks so good and can act. He's the one for those adventure stories, or stories with audience appeal that I think are coming back a lot. You're going to see an awful lot more of Tom."
"An Innocent Man" was a Disney project with Selleck attached when Yates came aboard. "I felt it was an excellent idea. And Tom was perfect, because anyone outwardly tougher or stronger would lose the point of the film, they'd lose the vulnerability, the background."
The prison sequences were filmed at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, and the cast and crew had to sign waivers absolving the prison of any responsibility should a prisoner cause a problem.
"It's basic procedure when anyone goes into a prison," Yates explained. "You have to sign a waiver that says they're not going to negotiate for you. Much the same as officers never carrying weapons there, because they could be taken away from them. So everybody knows everyone has signed a waiver, to they're not going to try to kidnap somebody because there's no advantage in it.
"We did have a bit of trouble with insurance. They're not keen on our taking somebody of Tom's stature into a prison, just in case somebody is serving a two-life sentence and might decide to go for a third, just for two days on television.
"But the cooperation is extraordinary. The only problem was that everybody became so relaxed I had to remind them they are prisoners. It's true that one began to think of them as extra actors."
Yates said he loves the video revolution and only gets upset when he can't find one of his own films in a store. "I think one makes a movie to be seen by people, because you believe in it. And especially the movies that I made that didn't get a particularly good run, like `Murphy's War,' which is now very popular on video — people who never saw it are now seeing it. `The Hot Rock,' for instance just recently came out on video."