Word: selleck
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...things to all people. The makers of An Innocent Man, Tom Selleck's new action-adventure movie, need to learn this lesson. The film tries to follow too many tangential plot lines and loses the audience's attention in the process...
First-time screenwriter Larry Brothers focuses on the relationship between married couple Kate (Laila Robins) and Jimmie Rainwood (Tom Selleck) to explain Jimmie's perseverence through three years in jail. Robins, however, destroys the credibility of the couple's love. She whines in monotones and never replaces her half-laughing, half-crying expression with solid performance...
...exactly what you'd call a sophisticated concept for a film. Yet, as a "made for television movie," the plot for Her Alibi might be almost palatable. Selleck is in top Magnum P.I. form here--he barely needs to change his act, and one cannot help thinking that that was the original intent of writer/director Bruce Beresford. The cynical and self-deprecating cracks are in full force, and there is even that familiar Selleck voiceover that distinguished the Magnum TV series...
...make Selleck feel even more at home, it seems Beresford has brought actors James Farentino, disinterred from his TV Dynasty days, and William Daniels, a casualty from the cancellation of the series St. Elsewhere to make guest appearances. Farentino, plays a pushy police lieutenant who does not believe in Nina's alibi, and though he gives a fair presentation of the script, his performance is uninspired. Daniels plays Selleck's whining publishing agent, but all he does is transfer his St. Elsewhere character to the screen. The cast is so familiar, in fact, that if you blink real fast...
Unfortunately for the actors, the script does not take any chances on the acting abilities of the cast. One predictable scene follows another. For example, in one scene Selleck takes Porizkova home with him but later wonders whether or not she is actually the murderer. Alone in his bedroom, he gets up to block the door with his dresser bureau. And then what? Well naturally, Porizkova walks in catching him in the act. What does Selleck reply? A better question is: what would Magnum reply? "Oh I was just exercising. Some people lift weights, I move furniture." Where...