Film is Pwn

Under Suspicion is a tense, small-scale movie drama, not surprisingly adapted from a play considering the small number of locales and characters are involved. The primary appeal in the movie is to see two titans in Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman going head to head with above average material.

Hackman plays Henry Hearst, a rich lawyer in San Juan, Puerto Rico (hey, that’s where they filmed part of Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster!). The film opens the day after Hearst discovered the murdered body of a pre-teen girl while out on the jog. The initial questioning the day before leaves a number of unanswered questions, so Captain Victor Benezet (Freeman) requests that Hearst come by the station for “ten minutes” to clear things up.

Hearst comes by dressed for a charity banquet later that evening, where he is scheduled to give a speech. Things start amiably; Hearst and Benezet are acquaintances, friendly but not friends. Hearst has trouble filling the holes in his story – he stated that a dog he was running with detected the body, and he discovered it when he went to see what the dog had gotten into. Except, all the witnesses state that there was no dog. There are a number of inconsistencies, and very quickly Benezet and hotheaded Det. Owens (Thomas Jane) begin treating Hearst like the prime suspect.

Hearst is indignant at first, but becomes increasingly frustrated when he can’t get the details straight. Benezet probes Hearst at first, but he begins to push him harder as the conversation morphs into an intense investigation. After Hearst’s stories about his whereabouts the night of the two murders continue to change in addition to details of his troubled marriage to his distant, glamorous, trophy wife (Monica Bellucci) and their inability to conceive children, Benezet is convinced Hearst is the killer. Is Benezet getting closer to pulling the truth out of Hearst, or is his single-minded interrogation serving to influence Hearst into believing that he committed crimes he did not?  Hearst is definitely hiding things, but what? Is the working-class Benezet out to get upper class Hearst because of class jealousy?

Hackman and Freeman play off each other like the two old pros that they are, and it’s a delight to watch them work.  Hackman is a respectable citizen with some dark secrets he is desperate to keep. Freeman is determined to get to catch the man killing girls on his island, and when he thinks Hackman is that man, Freeman sinks his teeth in with all the formidable intensity he can muster.

Under Suspicion is a murder mystery with only one suspect. That does not necessarily mean that Hackman as Hearst is the guilty party, because the mystery is entirely contained in one character’s guilt or innocence. This isn’t one of those idiotic thrillers like Twisted where it will suddenly be revealed that Freeman as Benezet is really the killer – and thank goodness for that.

Perhaps the most powerful line of the film is when Hearst whispers to the superintendent (Miguel Suarez) at a break in the midway point of the interrogation: “Just pray that I am guilty of killing those girls. Because if I am, then your boys worked over a monster. It’ll be brushed under the carpet. But if I’m not, then the monster changes sides.” Even though there is no physical torture in Under Suspicion and it was released in 2000, this is one of the most poignant examinations of interrogation in the Guantonimo Bay era that I’ve seen, and plenty of films have tried to touch on the issue without nearly as much impact (think: Rendition, if you never saw it you didn’t miss anything). 

The Guantonimo comparison didn’t strike me until the aforementioned quote of dialogue.  Is the mental abuse heaped on Hackman’s character warranted?  It may be necessary to force a very vile, very guilty man into confessing or it may be tormenting a perfectly innocent man and forcing a false confession.  Torture is wrong, yes.  If a bomb is about to go off and you’re sure the man you have in custody knows where it’s hidden, then is torture still wrong?  It’s an ends-justify-the-means question that I don’t have an answer for, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to re-examine in this little movie.

Beyond the moral dilemma, Under Suspicion is a small movie with larger than life performances from Hackman and Freeman, and you wouldn’t expect any less from the two who are undeniably two of the greatest living actors. This is a tense drama that should be seen.

Daniel J. Roos