Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

NateWatchesCoolMovies If Stephen Hopkin's Under Suspicion were a meal I was served at a restaurant, I would throw it against the wall, flip the table, walk promptly back to the kitchen and knock the chef out cold. It's a hollow, pointless piece, like digging into a pie that's put before you only to find that under that layer of crust there's no filling, only air. The premise is promising: wealthy businessman Gene Hackman who has political ties is grilled out of the blue by longtime friend and police detective Morgan Freeman and his partner Thomas Jane, regarding the murder of a thirteen year ago old girl in the slums of San Juan. Hackman is a successful, assured alpha socialite, and these type of men always have some type of close guarded secret which comes to light. Freeman is a dogged working man who probes him until it almost seems personal rather than routine. Sounds terrific, right? You would think. The acting is of course fine, as these guys couldn't miss a beat if they tried, but the way the story is set up just rips the viewer off blind. These two thespians soar spectacularly, but their duel is structured around purposefully unreliable flashbacks, beating around the bush and oodles of red herrings that treat the audience like sixth graders watching a low rent magician at a birthday party. Hackman has a pretty trophy wife (Monica Belluci, underused) and a host of personal demons that he projects onto Freeman's simple blue collar rhetoric like a defence mechanism. None of these narrative fireworks can save it though, especially when an ending rolls around that is the very definition of a letdown, through and through. In an attempt to explore the forces that drive a man to the edge of admitting guilt whether he is responsible or not, the filmmakers miss the boat on providing a focused treatise that takes itself seriously with these potentially fascinating themes, instead settling on an overcooked, ultimately vacant that could have been so much more.

Progressive-Element Under Suspicion centres almost entirely on an interrogation with a prominent American lawyer in Puerto Rico, who is key suspect in rape-murders of two young girls.Morgan Freeman as the cop, and Gene Hackman as the lawyer, are the sole reason to watch this, as they provide plenty of sparks as they play off each other, Freeman gradually breaking Hackman down.Too often though, it's as if the director has no confidence in his audience, and frequently turns to arty-farty sequences that become increasingly irritating.The ending will infuriate many.

dzhibrish *Spoilers aheadThis movie is amazing. There are almost no flaws in it. The acting is brilliant by all parties(including Monica Bellucci, and i only point this out because some reviewers wrote she was mainly "eye candy"). All the main characters are flawlessly played. The plot, scenes, the zoom-ins the suspenseful atmosphere created by the director and the camera.. As far as detective movies go this is one of the best of all times. Yes, of all times and believe me I have seen my share of movies. Many complain the ending is weak but IMO they don't see the whole picture. Other reviewers say that Henry loses character or that the ending is not surprising or climatic enough...IMO what this movie presents to us is the slow pealing and pressure that can be applied to a person and what it might make him do and parallel to that the complexities of relationships, especially the somewhat eccentric ones. Henry is first presented as an elegant and powerful figure but than his humanity is slowly revealed and he is shown as a regular person with many "flaws". There is nothing really to say about most of the movie because it is almost perfectly executes all perfectly does all that is expected of such a movie. In the ending Henry does not lose character or is just pressured into confessing. He is of course under great stress because of all these insinuations about him and all his secrets being revealed but the point is that at the end he is mostly concerned about what his wife thinks of him and her loyalty or disloyalty to him. This is why he confesses, he even says it right till the end, that he can't believe she thinks he did it, and after his confessions and after Morgan freeman says he is not guilty he stares at the mirror, knowing she is there and gives her a sign saying "ha! you see I'm innocent how could you think i did it you should be ashamed". If you weren't paying attention watch the last scenes before his confession and after and you will see what I mean. The point of the movie was not how he was broken by the copse, lost all sense and confessed of something he did not not. The ending was just an even more in depth look at the relationship between Henry and his wife. At the end the main character loses all hope in the marriage and strikes the final blow by testing his wife and seeing how she fails the test. the final scenes is him rejecting her completely and thereby supposedly ending their relationship.

Neil Welch Great performances do not, of themselves, make a great film. Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, great actors, deliver fine, nuanced performances, and Tom Jane and Monica Bellucci also do very well in this rather low key thriller which has almost disappeared off the filmographies of all concerned.I said, "thriller", but that is part of the problem here. The pursuit of Hackman's attorney as prime suspect in the paedophile murders of young girls in San Juan, and the subsequent discovery of elements of his character and his relationships with Freeman's police chief and Bellucci's trophy wife appear, at first sight, to be the substance of a thriller, and maybe they are. But the film does not conclude as a thriller might be expected to.It is strange how much the lack of a satisfactory resolution can have a bearing on one's enjoyment of a film. The last five minutes here left me scratching my head at what had just happened and why. And my inability to accept the conclusion - specifically (spoiler) Hackman's decision to admit the accusation against him - devalued what came before.This film did not work for me.