Review of Under Suspicion (2000) by Fahad A — 15 Nov 2008

This is a movie which, almost certainly, started out as a stage play, and does not try to hide it. Gene Hackman plays a rich lawyer with a glamorous young wife who is asked to answer some tricky questions by Morgan Freeman's detective and Thomas Jane's rookie cop about two murders of young girls.

As the story progresses, we stay with a very small character set, and very few locations (most of it is limited to the police station, with a few excursions as characters narrate previous events). Most of the film is the unravelling of the suspect's life and secrets and lies (yeah, I forgot the character name; I always do).

In the end, this would have worked better on the stage than it does in film. The memory sequences feel a bit forced. The dialogue sounds too dramatic and stagey. And, worst of all, the film relies on coincidences for many of its major plot points.

Still, I wasn't very bored.