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UNDER SUSPICION Send This Review to a Friend
Two fine actors playing antagonists, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, carry this film, which is a heavy burden even for these stalwarts. Their performances are at a top level, but they are working in the context of an unbelievable screenplay (by W. Peter Iliff and Tom Provost), and director Stephen Hopkins strains to make the improbable theatrics convincing. "Under Suspicion" is based on the book "Brainwash" by John Wainwright and the French film "Garde a Vue" by Claude Miller, Jean Herman and Michael Audiard.
The setting is Puerto Rico and renowned lawyer Henry Hearst (Hackman) is accused of raping and murdering a child. Trying to break him into a confession is his friend, Captain Victor Benezet (Freeman), abetted by an over-zealous assistant (Thomas Jane). Hearst's private life is a mess; he and his beautiful, younger wife Chantal (Monica Bellucci) have separate bedrooms. Is Hearst guilty or not? The pattern of his responses depend on your acceptance of him as a character so defeated and psychologically damaged that he can become self-destructive.
The director uses an interesting idea when dramatizing flashbacks pertaining to Hearst's interrogation. Although the scene shifts to places beyond the room in which the relentless questioning occurs, Freeman as interrogator is placed lurking in the flashback picture. But attempts as such creativity can't obscure the lack of credibility as Hearst, a lawyer, is pressed into answering questions that any lawyer would have certainly refused to discuss. Nor can the performances, as admirable as they are, make up for the very contrived drama cloaked in an atmosphere meant to be ominous. A Lions Gate Films release.
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