Making a film set in an American prison is sort of like making a horror film. When making the latter all you have to do is keep the lighting low , hold the camera close up on a characters face , have scary sounds out of view and there you have something that will effectively scare an audience . 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 . If you like the HBO prison drama OZ you'll certainly enjoy this . The day after it was shown on the ITV network a TV presenter even referred to it on a news feature dealing with juvenile crime
***** 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 . If you like the HBO prison drama OZ you'll certainly enjoy this . The day after it was shown on the ITV network a TV presenter even referred to it on a news feature dealing with juvenile crime