Intelligent, complex and engrossing, the 1990 film...
Intelligent, complex and engrossing, the 1990 film of the Scott Turow novel Presumed Innocent (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) works from a fascinating premise: A respected Midwestern prosecuting attorney (Harrison Ford) suddenly gets a reverse view when he becomes a suspect in the lurid sex murder of a colleague (Greta Scacchi) with whom he had a torrid affair.
Skillfully brought to the screen by director Bruce Beresford, Driving Miss Daisy (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), the 1989 film of Alfred Uhry’s play, brought the late Jessica Tandy a well-deserved Oscar as a cranky Atlanta widow. Over a 25-year period (starting in 1948), she gradually develops a tender friendship with her endlessly patient chauffeur (Morgan Freeman, equally fine).
The producers of The Vernon Johns Story (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.), a 1994 TV movie, couldn’t have found a better choice than James Earl Jones to portray the renegade minister and civil rights leader at the hub of this inspirational real-life drama. Jones plays a fiery African American pastor who attempts to politicize his staid Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Ala., in the early ‘50s; he in fact preceded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Gene Hackman is noteworthy as always as a career Army sergeant who becomes caught up in a murky plot in The Package (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.), but this 1989 thriller disappoints.
The 1986 Tough Guys (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a rousing tribute to the late Burt Lancaster and to Kirk Douglas, cast as a pair of veteran bank robbers, but it’s nothing much else.
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