Reel Rundown: Is Jake Gyllenhaal the king of remakes? ‘Presumed Innocent’ latest in actor’s slate of re-dos

Jake Gyllenhaal seems to be pointing his acting career in a new direction. Fresh off starring in Doug Liman’s recently released big-screen remake of “Road House,” he’s now the star of the Apple TV+ miniseries “Presumed Innocent.”

Yes, this is the same “Presumed Innocent” that author Scott Turow wrote as a best-selling novel in 1987 and that director Alan J. Pakula turned into a 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford.

So, is Gyllenhaal becoming the new king of remakes? If so, he might think about taking roles where the character he plays is just a bit more likeable. Because while the character he plays in “Road House” is troubled and prone to rage, he’s basically a decent guy.

In contrast, his character in Apple TV+’s “Presumed Innocent” is mostly a jerk.

Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, a hotshot Chicago prosecuting attorney who becomes the target of a murder investigation. And it’s only right that he should be considered a suspect seeing as he was having an affair with the victim – a colleague named Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve). Moreover, he was dangerously obsessed with Polhemus, and he was at her apartment on the night she was murdered, two important facts that he tries to cover up.

His boss, the Chicago district attorney Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp), believes in Sabich – or at least he believes in his right to a fair trial. But things get complicated when Horgan loses his elected position to another attorney, Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenie). Along with a colleague who has no love for Sabich, Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), the two decide to try Sabich for the crime.

Things are equally complicated in the biracial Sabich home. Wife Barbara (Ruth Negga) – who has already forgiven her husband once for straying with Polhemus – discovers during the investigation that he’d restarted the affair. She even considers having an affair of her own with a friendly bartender (Saunas J. Jackson), despite the effect the family troubles are having on the couple’s children, especially their daughter (Chase Infiniti).

Throughout it all, the supremely arrogant Sabich struts and stumbles his way, both proclaiming his innocence and fighting his attorneys, Horgan and an added member of the team (Gabby Beans). And while in the end an explanation is provided for why he does some of the actions that at first glance seem irrational, it doesn’t make him any more of a character that audiences are likely to embrace.

If you’ve read Turow’s novel, or seen Pakula’s movie, you already know some of where the story leads. Yet Kelley and his co-screenwriters, Miki Johnson and Sharr White, have made some adjustments that fit more in a contemporary context – changing the race and/or gender of some characters, eliminating some of Turow’s complicated subplot elements and even, to some extent, altering the ending.

For the most part, the acting is good across the board, from Negga and Beans to Camp, Fagbenie and Sarsgaard. Gyllenhaal, too, has his moments. The question, though, is whether this new version needed to be spread out over eight full, 40-plus-minute episodes when maybe three would have sufficed.

It would be enough to dislike Gyllenhaal’s Sabich for three episodes. But by episode eight, some of us had given up caring what the final verdict might be.