RUGGED Tom Selleck found fame and fortune in 1980 in the television crime series Magnum, P.I. He played Thomas Sullivan Magnum, a Vietnam veteran turned private investigator who is hired by a wealthy mystery writer. When he got tired of it, Selleck tried his hand at films. Some were good, some were bad.
One of the better ones is An Innocent Man (Pearl, 9.30pm), in which Selleck plays an all-American aircraft mechanic who emerges from his shower one morning to find two homicidal drugs investigators in his front room. They have mistaken him for a trafficker and when they realise their mistake they decide to go ahead and arrest him anyway.
Selleck is shot, framed, found guilty as charged and is duly carted off to Happyland to enjoy volleyball and basketball at the government's expense.
Once there, he dedicates himself to revenge. With the help of a network of inmates and ex-cons (F. Murray Abraham among them), he devises an intricate plot to make the bent cops incriminate themselves.
An Innocent Man does not compare to anything Alfred Hitchcock produced, but it has enough moments of interest to stop its audience falling into a deep sleep.
Selleck plays his usual, rather irritating, 'tough guy with a big heart' role. The real acting comes from F. Murray Abraham. THE only real acting in From The Hip (Pearl, 12.05am) comes from John Hurt (last seen in Hong Kong only last night in Midnight Express). But even he cannot save this ridiculous movie from itself.
Judd Nelson takes top billing, but once again plays the kind of character only a mother could love. He is a 'shoot from the hip' lawyer who has made a name for himself by winning difficult cases with outrageous courtroom tactics.