Movie Review – Under Suspicion (2000)
Principal Cast : Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Monica Bellucci, Nydia Caro, Miguel Angel Suarez, Pablo Cunqueiro, Patricia Beato, Soledad Esponda, Marison Calero.
Synopsis: A wealthy attorney in San Juan comes to the police station for “10 minutes” of follow-up questions to finding a 12-year-old girl’s body in a park. Another young girl was also raped and murdered weeks earlier and the evidence points to him.
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This review directly critiques specific plot points for Under Suspicion. It’s weird to suggest a spoiler warning for a film that’s a quarter century old at this point, but here we are.
What you might expect to be a taut, performative masterclass in acting and theatricality from two seasoned legends of the big screen is, in reality, a sodden, sweaty, misaligned misfire. Under Suspicion fails to hold together with any kind of inventiveness, throwing in showboat cinematographic virtuosity—of the not particularly good kind—in an attempt to overcome the insistent chamber-piece tonality of this entirely un-thrilling “thriller.” Laboured plot devices and an overbearing focus on underage sexual assault as a recurring theme make for an uncomfortable watch, with both Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman trying their best to Se7en this thing together before it collapses entirely in a whiplash-inducing final act.
Plot synopsis courtesy of IMDb: Set in Puerto Rico, Under Suspicion follows prominent lawyer Henry Hearst (Gene Hackman), who is called in for routine questioning by police captain Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman) on the night of a charity gala. What begins as a simple inquiry about Henry’s discovery of a murdered young girl quickly escalates into an intense psychological battle, as Benezet and his ambitious lieutenant (Thomas Jane) uncover inconsistencies in Henry’s story. As the interrogation unfolds, flashbacks blur the line between truth and deception, casting doubt on Henry’s innocence while exposing hidden tensions in his marriage to his much-younger wife Chantal (Monica Bellucci). With shifting perspectives and mounting pressure, Under Suspicion builds to a tense and unexpected climax, leaving the audience questioning everything they thought they knew.
As an American remake of the French film Garde à Vue (The Inquisitor), filmmaker Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Lost in Space) had all the stars align for what should have been a potboiler thriller showcasing screen titans Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman in a battle of wills and wits. With two leading men of inestimable talent, the sultry visuals of a sublimely sexy Monica Bellucci, and an incredibly wooden Thomas Jane providing unintended comic relief as a secondary detective, Hopkins even had a relatively exotic locale, filming on location in Puerto Rico. On paper, this thing had the makings of a low-budget hit. Unfortunately, an overly fanciful premise and an overabundance of sidebar material that adds little to the film’s effectiveness result in Under Suspicion misfiring spectacularly, leaving it with a movie-of-the-week feel instead of a headline-grabbing salaciousness.
The plot is effectively a one-hander, a stage-play chamber piece that relies on its two principal performers to generate legitimate screen presence. With Gene Hackman headlining, you expect a 100% committed performance regardless of the material, and thus, expectations are high. However, the film sputters—a lot. It’s oddly staged, clumsily filmed and edited, and overloaded with snappy, sizzle-reel visual effects designed to accentuate the oppressive Puerto Rican heat while meshing uncomfortably with the film’s disturbing themes. Hackman’s Henry Hearst, a lawyer of impeccable intelligence, is gradually revealed to have base desires that cause him to falter, much to the disgust of Morgan Freeman’s upright and morally centred Victor Benezet. The murder of two pre-teen girls is a grim premise on which to centre a predominantly male-led movie, particularly when it’s used so salaciously to drive the plot. Writers Tom Provost and W. Peter Iliff (Point Break) fail to imbue either character with enough depth to navigate the film’s narrative weight, leaving Hackman and Freeman to salvage what they can. Both commit to the material, but Hopkins’ direction never adequately accommodates their performances, resulting in an uneven and ineffective tone.
Monica Bellucci’s Chantal, ostensibly Hearst’s sexually estranged wife, is revealed to have an unexplained, perverse hold over him that he is unwilling to share. She is the film’s red herring—ice-cold and detached—but her mysterious backstory ultimately fails to connect with the audience. A bonkers third-act plot twist leaves viewers wondering why they bothered investing in her character at all. The film raises more questions than it answers about Bellucci’s taciturn Chantal, simultaneously an object of desire and immense frustration. Thomas Jane’s wooden Felix Owens is even worse off, stuck in a generic good-cop-bad-cop archetype with no hope of escape. Jane, an actor of middling ability with emotional material (excellent in The Mist, but poor here), is stranded by a character with dialogue as lifeless as his delivery.
The film’s so-called “thrills” hinge on the Hackman/Freeman dynamic, but Under Suspicion lacks an engaging connection to either character due to off-putting writing. Hackman’s Hearst is snobbish, cruel, and impenetrable—why should we care about his plight? Why dedicate an entire film to such an awful character, particularly when his redemption is utterly undermined by a ridiculous story twist? Hearst’s eventual confession to the murders collapses under scrutiny when it is revealed, in a deus ex machina moment, that another girl has just been found dead in identical circumstances, and the real killer is already in custody. Meaning, astonishingly, that the man confessing to the crimes actually… didn’t do it? What the fuck? The original French film had the Chantal character commit suicide as a downbeat full stop to the narrative, but Hopkins, perhaps assuming American audiences wouldn’t accept such an ending, instead gives us a bizarre moment where Bellucci’s Chantal considers jumping to her death before inexplicably turning up across the street, opposite a bewildered Hackman. The film attempts to craft a “happily ever after” ending despite three murdered girls and a night wasted badgering an innocent man into a false confession. Is that the takeaway? Hard to say, but by the end, I was at least applauding Hopkins for trying to deliver a Shyamalan-style twist to counter the sheer boredom of the preceding hour.
Under Suspicion is undercooked, underwritten, and guilty of trying to be a potboiler police procedural held together by Freeman and Hackman at the peak of their powers. Unfortunately, whether due to the shoddy writing or the overblown Y2K-era direction from Hopkins, the film’s ponderous setup, tiresome middle section (complete with an extraneous subplot involving Chantal’s sister and her family in a confused sexual predator arc), and dumbfounding conclusion fumble their way to an extraordinarily dull crime thriller as lifeless as the girls in the plot. As I said—Hackman and Freeman give it their all, but Under Suspicion is a terrible misfire in every other aspect and not worth the effort to sit through.
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