Under Suspicion **½ (2000, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Monica Bellucci, Thomas Jane) – Classic Movie Review 3702

Director Stephen Hopkins’s intriguing 2000 thriller stars Gene Hackman as Henry Hearst, a smug lawyer in a bad toupee, who is suspected of a girl’s murder, and becomes involved in a series of mind games with the investigating officer, Captain Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman). Hearst is asked to come to the police station to clear up a few loose ends in his witness report of the murder.

Ideally cast Hackman and Freeman do a wonderful job to put some much needed dynamism into this slackly handled crime drama, remaking French director Claude Miller’s much better Garde à Vue [The Inquisitor] (1981), adapting its original French screenplay by Claude Miller, Jean Herman and Michel Audiard.

But the story from a British novel, Brainwash, by John Wainwright (new screenplay by Tom Provost and W Peter Iliff) is very intelligent and the provocative topic is still red hot.

It also stars Monica Bellucci as Hearst’s wife Chantal Hearst and Thomas Jane as Detective Felix Owens. Also in the cast are Nydia Caro, Miguel Angel Suarez, Pablo Cunqueiro and Isabel Algaze.

It runs 111 minutes and the video version runs 106 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3702

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